The Sherburne Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) is pleased to announce available funding for establishing monarch butterfly habitat.  The grant is being funded by the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund (MBCF), an initiative established by National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in 2015 and financially supported by the Monsanto Company, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Geological Survey, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and U.S. Forest Service.

 

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has awarded Great River Greening (GRG) a $110,916 grant to support the recovery of monarch butterflies in which the goal is to improve more than 500 acres of monarch habitat in the greater Twin Cities, 25 acres specifically in Sherburne County. 

 

Over the past two decades, the North American monarch population has decreased from 1 billion to fewer than 60 million.  One factor attributing to this declined includes the loss of critical habitat. Using the Great River Greening funds, the Sherburne SWCD is offering a $200/acre incentive for adding monarch species to new prairie plantings that are already taking advantage of the SWCD Prairie Incentive program, which offers cost share of 75% of the seed cost, up to $600/acre. For more information on planting prairie and monarch habitat in Sherburne County, please contact the Sherburne SWCD at 763-241-1170 extension 4 or ghugo@sherburneswcd.org. 

 

To learn more about the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s work on monarchs as well as the 2016 grant recipients, visit nfwf.org/monarch.com.