Kentucky has just a fraction of the butterflies it did a decade ago because the habitat they need to reproduce is being destroyed…That’s according to the President of the Fleming County Garden Club Dana Sorrell.
That’s why, says Sorrell, the club has developed a Monarch Way Station in the hopes of getting butterflies to land, eat and lay eggs. She says butterflies need milk weeds and other types of flowers that are now being wiped out by the herbicides and pesticides Kentucky farmers are using.
“We’ve lost so many that we now only have about a tenth of what we used to have in the last probably ten years. That’s a lot to lose for them not to able to stop, they won’t stop here because there is no milkweed and they have to have that in the nectar plant and the other kind of plants…butterfly bushes and other kind of flowers, quite a large variety.” --Dana Sorrell, President, Fleming County Garden Club
Sorrell says butterflies used to land in Kentucky on their way to Mexico, where they spend the winter. She’s hoping the garden club’s development of a Monarch station with milk weeds and other plants that butterflies will bring them back. It’s located near the Old Reservoir Walking Trail in Flemingsburg. She says volunteers will assemble at 9 o’clock Friday morning to make decorative pieces for way station and butterfly garden.