Grants To Local Parks Aim To Restore Butterfly Habitat

THURMONT, Md. (AP) -- Cunningham Falls State Park wants to help the butterflies.

Milkweed, butterfly weed, coneflowers, goldenrod and asters are some of the plants going into a half-acre plot underneath a large power line. With some help from Mother Nature, there will be lots of monarchs flitting about the patch by this fall. Smaller gardens with native plants will be planted along the beach parking area and near the park's nature center.

The Friends of Cunningham Falls and Gambrill State Parks, a nonprofit that supports the parks, received a $2,500 grant from the FirstEnergy Foundation to buy the plants. Park staff and volunteers from the organization will help put in the plants, and the park will try to get rid of the invasive plants that often take over open spaces.

The FirstEnergy grant supplements a similar grant from the state Department of Natural Resources Wildlife and Heritage program. "We had the Wildlife and Heritage grant, and they hopped on board," said Mark Spurrier, manager of Cunningham Falls and Gambrill.

"All of this was Japanese honeysuckle, barberry and multiflora rose," said park ranger Jeremy Hulse, standing in one of the medians in the parking lot at the Houck area beach. Workers removed those invasive plants.

In their place will be poplar, dogwood and cherry trees, coneflowers, aster, chokecherry and other native shrubs, goldenrod and joe-pye weed. These native plants will provide food for butterflies and other wildlife, and will brighten an area that has long been neglected, Hulse said. "It's a great opportunity to have an area for native species to grow," he said.

The parking lot medians, like the power line right-of-ways, are cleared areas where invasive plants can easily take over, Hulse said. Invasive plants tend to be hardy and spread easily. They also crowd out native species. Unlike native plants, they have no natural control. Barberry can make a wooded area almost impassible.

The native plants will bloom at different times of the year, helping to both feed wildlife and make the garden look appealing to visitors from spring through fall.

Also, Hulse added, "This is the most visited area of our park. Instead of having a bunch of species we don't want, we'll have examples of what people can do. The main goals are to beautify the park and make it a teachable moment."

A tiny garden in front of a the nature center was started a couple years ago, and more plants will be added to the collection of bee balm, asters and coneflowers growing there.

The gardens will total an area of 2 1/2 to 3 acres, Spurrier said. The migratory monarch butterflies are always on the lookout for nectar from the air, along with the milkweed they need to lay their eggs. Monarchs lay eggs several times through the summer. The last group, known as the fifth generation, migrates to Mexico for the winter, before returning to the East and Midwest in the spring. During that long journey, monarchs seek the nectar they need for flying energy from asters, goldenrod and other fall-blooming plants.

Native plants provide the most energy for butterflies, which have experienced a plunge in numbers in the past 20 years. "Over the past two decades, some states have seen monarch populations losses as high as 90 percent," said Jennifer Frye, invertebrate ecologist for the DNR, in a press release. Butterflies need to thrive in an increasingly fragmented landscape, she added.

The DNR won a $32,000 grant in December as part of the Northeast Monarch Grants to States program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The grant will support butterfly conservation and habitat restoration on 10 acres across six state parks and two wildlife management areas this year.

The population losses intensified recently because of habitat loss and because Midwestern farmers began using crops treated with herbicides that kill off milkweed and other nectar plants.

Restoration of habitat is becoming more important at Cunningham Falls, Spurrier said. Although the park has many historical and recreational functions, it hopes to include habitat restoration wherever that is feasible, he said. "We're seeing we need to get our habitat back in balance," he said.

The effort also makes sense, he said. The tangled growth that had begun to overtake the green spaces between the parking lot made it hard to see from one lot to the next. "Without the tall shrubs, the parking lots are safer," he said. In addition, the areas would be mowed a few times a year, and the native plants will reduce the need for mowing.
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Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, http://www.fredericknewspost.com