The Chevy Chase Estates Garden Club has recently established an official Monarch Butterfly Waystation at Emerald Isle Park to give new wings to an old natural wonder: the monarch butterfly migration.
The effort was spearheaded by Leticia Gonzalez as a tribute and in memory of Mary Betlach, past president of the Chevy Chase Estates Garden Club, who was a passionate advocate to save the monarch butterfly.
Each fall, hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies migrate from the United States and Canada to mountains in central Mexico, where they wait out the winter until conditions favor a return flight in the spring. The monarch migration is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, yet it is threatened by habitat loss at overwintering grounds in Mexico and throughout breeding areas in the United States and Canada.
Monarch waystations are places that provide resources necessary for monarchs to produce successive generations and sustain their migration. Without milkweeds throughout their spring and summer breeding areas in North America, monarchs would not be able to produce the successive generations that culminate in the migration each fall.
The Chevy Chase Estates Garden Club was founded in 1947 with the purpose of supporting the conservation of the natural resources within the canyon.
First published in the June 22 print issue of the Glendale News-Press.
