Monarch Butterfly Festival in Winnipeg offers chance to support species at risk

The Living Prairie Museum hosted its 14th annual Monarch Butterfly Festival for all ages this weekend, offering chances to learn about and support the at-risk species.

Monarch butterflies have experienced an 80 per cent decline since the 1990s, Cameron Ruml, acting director of the Living Prairie Museum, told CBC's Up to Speed guest host Keisha Paul on Friday.

"The major factor affecting them is kind of habitat loss. So when you lose their habitat, you lose their host plants: milkweed," he said.

Butterflies are pollinators, Ruml said, making them an important part of our ecosystem.

The festival offered crafts, exhibit booths, live butterflies, guided hikes, prairie plant sales and milkweed giveaways.

Ruml does not recommend raising the insects indoors because it puts them at risk of getting sick or having parasites, which is why milkweed plants were given away over the weekend.

Planting milkweed is the best way to support butterflies, according to Ruml, since it's the plant that monarch caterpillars need to survive.

"The adult butterflies land and lay their eggs on the milkweed, and then the caterpillars eat it and turn into a chrysalis and then become a monarch," he said.

Ruml also encourages people to plant native wildflowers in their gardens to create more habitat for butterflies. He said people can come down to the museum if they want help with planting native wildflowers.

The monarch butterfly is classified as a "species of special concern" under the federal Species at Risk Act, due to negative effects caused by climate change, habitat destruction, harmful herbicides and insecticides and invasive plant species, according to a fact sheet on Environment and Climate Change Canada's website.

The government says it's working in partnership with the United States and Mexico to coordinate research and habitat conservation for monarch butterflies.

"The absence or presence of Monarchs can tell us a lot about changing environmental conditions," the website said.