Vaughan hosting research site for David Suzuki Foundation study on monarch butterfly

Yorkregion.com
Sept. 14, 2015
By Adam Martin-Robbins

Vaughan will play a small part in efforts to restore the country’s dwindling monarch butterfly population.

The David Suzuki Foundation has launched a multi-year research project with University of Guelph researchers Tyler Flockhart and Ryan Norris to study population dynamics of migratory monarch butterflies in an effort to determine “the most ecological and cost-effective methods” to restore monarch habitat.

Initial research is being conducted along three infrastructure corridors in southern Ontario including lands adjacent to Hydro One’s Claireville Transformer Station on Martin Grove Road, south of Hwy. 7, in Vaughan.

Research will also be carried out in the Uxbridge Subdivision on the Stouffville GO Train corridor and at a habitat restoration site within Markham’s Milne Dam Conservation Park.

“Linear infrastructure corridors are the landscape of greatest opportunity for monarch butterfly conservation across North America,” Flockhart, a University of Guelph conservation biologist, said in a news release. “For the next two years we’ll be working to find the most ecological and cost-effective methods to restore monarch habitat- providing scientifically-based guidance for the growing movement to recover dwindling pollinators through habitat restoration. We hope to engage citizen scientists as well.”

The eastern monarch population has dropped dramatically since the 1990s. The decline is believed to be caused, in part, by the dramatic loss of milkweed plants, which monarch larvae feed on, and habitat destruction.