By Nelson Eisman
Friends of Lake View Hill Park

To celebrate our 40th anniversary, Annette and I went to Mexico in January 2017 to see the wintering grounds of the Monarch butterfly. We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast in Michoacan and rode horseback up the mountain where the butterflies gather in the pine trees. Some trees had so many butterflies they looked like butterfly trees. Our guide told us that when he was a boy his father, who was a warden on the mountain protecting the area, took him to see these trees, and there were hundreds of them. Now there are dozens. The Monarch population is in serious decline.

The Friends of Lake View Hill Park has been suppressing the exotic thistles on the front lawn and encouraging the growth of woodland flowers the Monarchs feed on and the common milkweed they need to lay their eggs on. The caterpillars of the Monarch eat only milkweed leaves.

Our park was recently recognized by Monarch Watch, a nonprofit education and conservation group, as meeting the criteria as a Monarch Waystation. We hope that providing the habitat and diet Monarch butterflies need will help them rebuild their population.