How You Can Help Save the Monarch Butterfly And Other Pollinators

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 13 January 2022

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Western monarch butterflies migrate to California to overwinter each year, traveling hundreds, even thousands of miles When they arrive, they need nectar flowers and milkweed to survive, but climate change, pesticide use and loss of habitat are threatening these magical creatures. A Bay Curious listener named Ellea wants to know what we can do to help support the Monarchs and other pollinators. One major learning from this episode: It's illegal to rear monarchs without a permit! Additional Reading How You Can Help Save the Monarch Butterfly and Other Pollinators Reported by Amanda Stupi. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Katrina Schwartz, Sebastian Miño-Bucheli and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Kyana Moghadam, Jessica Placzek, Natalia Aldana, Carly Severn, Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, Ethan Lindsey, Vinnee Tong and Jenny Pritchett.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From K-QED.
0:03.0	I want you to take a moment with me and consider the butterfly.
0:07.0	Specifically the monarch butterfly.
0:12.0	You may have seen these bright orange. Specifically the monarch butterfly.
0:13.1	You may have seen these bright orange and black creatures floating around a California
0:17.7	garden.
0:18.8	Their wings are almost a glow and patterned like a stained glass window.
0:24.0	When the monarch lands on a flower, she uncoils her long proboscis,
0:29.0	basically a tongue, to sip on the plant's nectar.
0:32.0	Then she floats from flower to
0:34.8	flower to repeat the process and as she does that she carries pollen with her
0:39.4	completing an essential task in our ecosystem.
0:45.0	Now, most monarchs live just a few weeks,
0:47.6	but every fall a generation is born
0:49.6	that gets a lot more time,
0:51.6	and they have an important mission. Migrate. Some travel more than 2,000
0:57.1	miles. For an animal that weighs no more than a paper clip that's a remarkable journey. Now here's the bad news. In the 1980s
1:06.8	there were millions of monarch butterfly sightings in California every year, but in
1:11.7	2020 there were fewer than 2,000.
1:17.2	The monarchs are in danger.
1:22.0	This news got the attention of a Bay curious listener, Alya, who asked, what's happening to the monarchs and how can we as humans help?
1:29.0	Her question won a public voting round on BayCurious.org, and today we're going to bring you some answers.
	...

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