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Mission Monarch: Saving butterflies and other wildlife in urban Philly

Tucked between sleek urban office buildings and the historic red brick of Center City is now a taste of wildlife.

Lamar Gore of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in a pocket park behind the Free Quaker House where monarchs can feed during migrations.
Lamar Gore of the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in a pocket park behind the Free Quaker House where monarchs can feed during migrations.Read moreCLEM MURRAY / Staff Photographer

Tucked between sleek urban office buildings and the historic red brick of Center City is now a taste of wildlife.

On Wednesday, a team of high school students with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planted flowers in a plot they have been working on since March. The area, several feet of dirt between a stone wall and benches just outside the Free Quaker Meeting House at Fifth and Arch Streets, was once just fallen leaves and soil riddled with English ivy. Now, this strip of Independence National Historical Park is blooming with bee balm, a stringy red petal flower that hummingbirds like to poke their beaks into, and purple coneflowers, a favorite of bees.

The effort was in celebration of National Pollinator Week, which wraps up Sunday. Monarch butterflies are at the focus of the campaign, as they are one of the most recognizable of pollinating animals, with their black-trimmed orange wings. They face a steady threat to their habitats, thanks to pesticides. The World Wildlife Fund lists them as "near threatened."

But the Fish and Wildlife Service has a plan to make Philadelphia a nice place for the monarchs to stop during their annual migration from Mexico and California to Canada and back.

Lamar Gore, who manages the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, says the answer is pocket parks. He envisions small parks brimming with the flowers and plants that monarchs, bees, hummingbirds, and other pollinators feast on.

He hopes to create a "pollinator corridor" of native flowers from the refuge, following the bike trails outward. This network already has two other pocket parks, in Kingsessing, at 56th Street and Chester Avenue, and at Cecil Street and Kingsessing Avenue, and plans to build more.

By posting signs and designing programs aimed at educating students and residents, Gore said, he hopes to communicate the importance of pollinators.

"The real important part about conservation [is] not about how much science you can keep digging up," Gore said Thursday. "It's about showing others how science affects their lives."

Work like this is especially important in cities, Gore said.

"It took me time to realize that we were focusing in the wrong spaces," Gore said, "because the reality is, most of our populations are in the city."

Unlike some endangered or threatened species, there are steps any individual can take to help monarchs and other pollinators. Gore suggested growing plants that will support the creatures, like milkweed, spiderwort, black-eyed Susans, and wild geraniums.

Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Tylar Greene said urbanites can dip their toes into conservation by learning about pollinators.

They are "gateway" animals, she said.

Monarchs, bees, and other pollinators are some "of the species that you can find here," she said.

"They're recognizable. They'll be in an urban area, less intimidating for people," Greene said. "And that in turn, hopefully, will instill that sense of wonder and caring, and people will then be, like, 'We have to conserve other species.' "

lfeiner@philly.com

215-854-5915@lauren_feiner