Texas Fauna Project

Monarch Butterfly

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Jeff Glassberg, Ph.D., a molecular geneticist, is also a butterfly expert responsible for founding the North American Butterfly Association and the National Butterfly Center. Here he points out there are contradictions about campaigns to plant the common milkweed, a plant that the monarch butterfly heavily relies on, to restore the monarch to its former huge numbers. For instance, there are signs that the common milkweed was likely less common in the years before Westerners settled the Midwest and farmed the prairies. From that view, planting milkweed might well not turn the clock back, nor restore the monarch.