MPF Webinar: Making “Home on the Range” for Monarch Butterflies (VIRTUAL)

The abundance of milkweed species, the sole host plants for monarch larvae, has dramatically declined in the past 25 years due to increased usage of herbicides and the spread of row crop agriculture that covers 21% of the continental United States. Given the importance of milkweeds to monarch larvae, there has been a major conservation effort to increase milkweed abundance in many sectors.

However, conservation efforts have largely ignored rangeland because of the incorrect assumption that grazers do not consume milkweeds, and that milkweed abundance may be near maximum in rangeland. This is a significant conservation blind spot because rangeland covers 34% of the continental United States.

Join University of Nebraska Omaha Associate Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies Associate Director Timothy Dickson, Ph.D., for a webinar on his research exploring how grazing grasslands in Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa can better support the monarch lifecycle through the promotion of native milkweed species as cattle food sources.

This free webinar, to be held via Zoom, will include a presentation and a live question-and-answer session. The webinar will be recorded, and a link to the recording will be sent to all registrants and posted to the MPF YouTube channel.