Enthusiasm for naturalized yards, monarch conservation buoys Thunder Bay field naturalist

A member of the Thunder Bay Field Naturalists says he welcomes a new by-law for the city, which allows residents to naturalize their yards.

The change was made so people could create habitats for a declining population of birds and insects.

"In today's world, we have issues with nature," John Walas said.

"Nature's in trouble. Nature's got its back up against the wall. Anything that we can do to help nature will help us in the long term because we're part of that big circle."

The natural landscapes don't need to have giant patches of ugly weeds, but they can be a mixture of flowers or other plants, Walas said. 

"You can mix and match," he said. "You can have flowers that attract pollinators. I have flowers that attract pollinators. And I think that's a great way of doing it as well."

It's important to think about pollinators when working on yards or spaces, he added. 

Walas is also buoyed by local conservation efforts aimed at increasing monarch butterfly populations, he said. 

The butterflies were recently added to the list of endangered species.

The late Dan Fulton, the organizer of the volunteer group Urban Greenscapes, helped ignite enthusiasm for monarch conservation in Thunder Bay, spearheading the creation of the Adelaide Monarch Garden near Boulevard Lake and holding annual sales of milkweed plants – the sole food source of the monarch caterpillar. 

Such was the demand that milkweed shortages were becoming a common occurrence. 

Milkweed, has frequently been disposed of as a regular weed, Walas said. 

"Farmers eradicated it from their fields because it made their cows sick. So this is an important thing that this monarch butterfly is now listed as endangered. The most important thing that happens because of that is education."

He said when people learn about it, they do what's possible to grow more plants and grow the monarch population.