Missouri Department of Conservation can connect Missouri landowners with cost sharing for monarch butterfly habitat

Landowners in northwest and west-central Missouri can faucet a income supply by way of the USDA’s Pure Sources Conservation Service program referred to as PRIME, an acronym for Program Restoring and Bettering Monarch Ecosystems. The Missouri Division of Conservation may help join landowners with this system and provide experience on administration practices that assist monarch butterflies and all pollinators. PRIME goals to extend monarch and pollinator habitat by way of land administration practices and short-term land rental funds.

“Missouri’s PRIME is not going to solely financially profit collaborating landowners, however can even profit the monarch butterfly by offering the required habitat for rising wholesome caterpillars and offering the meals for migrating adults, mentioned Invoice White, MDC group and personal land conservation department chief.

Landowners can apply to NRCS for the PRIME program by way of Could 20. Companions within the USDA’s Regional Partnership Program embody MDC, Pheasants Ceaselessly and Quail Ceaselessly, and the Saint Louis Zoo. PRIME will goal lands presently enrolled in and expiring from the Conservation Reserve Program. Sustaining and restoring numerous native plant communities is a key purpose.

Counties qualifying for this system embody Andrew, Atchison, Benton, Buchanan, Caldwell, Carroll, Cass, Clay, Clinton, Daviess, DeKalb, Gentry, Grundy, Harrison, Holt, Jackson, Johnson, Lafayette, Livingston, Mercer, Nodaway, Pettis, Platte, Ray, Saline, and Price.

Western Missouri serves as one of many vital monarch butterfly migration corridors as populations head south in late summer season and start returning north within the spring. One in every of their major migration routes bisects northwest Missouri and is known as the I-35 Monarch Migration Hall. Preserving native prairie remnants helps monarchs, different pollinators, and grassland birds. However so does offering parcels with restored wildflowers and grasses. Habitat loss is the main explanation for a big decline in monarch butterfly populations because the Nineteen Nineties.

To study extra about PRIME or to use, contact your native NRCS service heart, or contact Marilyn Gann at [email protected] or at 573-876-9398.

(Monarch Butterfly picture courtesy Mo. Division of Conservation)

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