Sandpoint embraces its monarch moment at festival

SANDPOINT — Monarch butterflies were everywhere at Saturday's Monarch & Friends Festival.

Decorations featured the distinctive bright orange-and-black butterflies. Crafts offered a chance to make them from colorful pipe cleaners. An oversized monarch butterfly offered a chance for photos.

Looking around, Perky Hagadone, who organized the festival along with Pam Duquette, beamed.

"I walked past this mom and her little daughter — and she just smiled and said, 'This is awesome," Hagadone said. "That made all of the work since January worth it."

The Monarch & Friends Festival aimed to accomplish two things: celebrate Sandpoint becoming a Monarch City, the third in North Idaho along with Dover and Rathdrum, and promote education about pollinators' importance.

Monarch City USA is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to protecting the monarch butterfly by helping in nationwide efforts to restore its native habitat. As part of the program, cities pledge to discourage pesticide use while promoting education on the importance of pollinators.

The festival featured more than two dozen booths to educate residents about the importance of pollinators, including monarch butterflies. The festival included crafts, opportunities to pick up milkweed seeds and plants, and booths offering information on monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

"I want people to know there's hope through action," Hagadone said. "Just pick something and do it. Plant a stalk of milkweed in your yard, investigate native plants and ask how can I incorporate these into my yard. I just want people to act. It can be little, it doesn't have to be huge."

But, Hagadone said, the more people who choose to act and help, the more those actions add up.

The festival culminated in the release of three tagged monarch butterflies, which can be tracked online through the Project Monarch app, along with a number of other monarchs. Roughly 100 monarch butterflies will be released in Idaho and another 100 in Oregon in an attempt to boost monarch numbers in the western United States.

Efforts by the local Mighty Monarch conservation group are starting to pay off, with more native milkweed such as showy and narrowleaf milkweed being planted in the area, Hagadone said.

"The group has been trying to get people to grow milkweed for four years, and now we have a ton of people who have milkweed in their yards," she added.

Beth Goodnight has raised monarch butterflies for the past several years, getting involved as a way to give back. She and her husband grow milkweed on their property and maintain an area where they raise 10 to 20 monarchs before setting them free.

A Master Naturalist, she knows the importance of pollinators, including western monarch butterflies, as well as the importance of native milkweed, the plant on which the butterfly species is dependent.

"Milkweed is the only plant that the monarch caterpillars can eat," Goodnight said. "If a female butterfly cannot find milkweed, she will not lay eggs. There will be no more butterflies. So you have to have milkweed, and that's the main reason for this festival is to raise awareness to get people to plant milkweed."

Unfamiliar with the plant or misinformed about its dangers to livestock, Goodnight and several others shared its importance, offering seeds and seedlings for festival-goers to take home and plant.

Intrigued by the idea, Goodnight and her husband bought about 10 caterpillars from a Utah company. They asked around and watched videos on how to raise them, taking milkweed from their yard and putting it into their butterfly enclosure.

"We watched them eat and eat and eat," Goodnight said. "We watched them make chrysalises and then we let them go and they made a beeline to our milkweed patch."

This year is the second year the couple has raised monarchs, drawing inspiration and support from nearby Wings Rising, an Athol-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

When the butterflies laid eggs, they carefully gathered them and put them in their protected butterfly enclosure. The eggs hatched into caterpillars, formed chrysalises and then transformed into monarch butterflies.

"It just feels really great to be part of a solution, and not trying to eradicate habitat," Goodnight said. "You know, that it's a big problem all over the country, all over the globe, we're eradicating habitat. If we don't have insects, especially pollinators, we don't have food. It's absolutely essential, and really, a festival like this helps bring awareness to how cool insects are."

Fellow Master Naturalists Cheri Bahr and Pat Meyer have transformed their yard into a space that celebrates the area's native plants, including milkweed, to attract and protect local pollinators.

"One of the things we try to do is increase the number of pollinators that we've got," Bahr said. "And one of the major pollinators is the western monarch butterfly that has been almost extinct in this area."

By educating the hundreds of people attending Saturday's festival, organizers and volunteers at more than two dozen information booths said they hoped to raise awareness of pollinators' importance.

Native plants are a key way to boost pollinators in the community, Meyer and Bahr said. Both noted that gardens and yards can feature both native plants and hybrids, allowing residents to create a yard that is both a welcome refuge for humans and pollinators alike.

"We hope people go away (from the festival) understanding that we need more pollinators and help create habitat for pollinators," Meyer said.

Pollinators are declining around the world, and that should be a big concern for everyone, he said.

"They're part of the food chain," added Meyer. "If we don't have the pollinators, we don't have food. So that's a really big, big deal. We need to do what we can to increase the habitat for pollinators, so we have more pollinators."

    A monarch butterfly rests on a release container as Perky Hagadone and family release a monarch butterfly at a butterfly release during the Monarch & Friends Festival in Sandpoint on Saturday.
  

    A volunteer releases monarch butterflies at the culmination of the Monarch & Friends Festival in Sandpoint on Saturday.
  

    Pam Duquette encourages a monarch butterfly she sponsored to fly away during a butterfly release event at the Monarch & Friends Festival on Saturday.
  

    Kelly Peterson and Sloane Behrens pose for a monarch butterfly-themed photo behind a giant butterfly cutout at Saturday's Monarch & Friends Festival.