Kelly Hutsell/KANSAN

Pesticides and encroaching human developments are depleting habitats of monarch butterflies. The monarch weigh station project is getting people to plant milk weed and nectar plants, both monarch habitats, to ensure a future for the butterfly.

After more than 10 years, Orley “Chip” Taylor is still fighting for the monarch butterfly and hoping to help other animals at the same time.

Taylor is the director of Monarch Watch and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas. The creation of “waystations” is his latest attempt to preserve habitats for the species along its North American migration route. He hopes that his efforts with monarchs will lead to preservation efforts for other migratory species.

“We’ve been encouraging people to grow waystations for years, but they never really went anywhere until now,” he said.

A waystation is a microhabitat composed of various plants that can support a species.

Monarch butterflies flock to Mexico for the winter months and then breed after returning to the United States in the spring.

Monarch butterfly larvae can eat only the various species of milkweed, and are laid on the plants by females. Adult butterflies eat the nectar of numerous flowering plants.

Taylor’s new way of advocating the need for waystations includes giving them a familiar reference for people to compare them to.

Stops along a train route, or the rest stops along an interstate highway, are good examples of how useful and important waystations are to monarchs, he said.

Waystations fulfill the need for monarchs to have microhabitats spread all along their migration routes. There they can eat, rest and mate. Many other migratory species, such as various birds and bats, also use microhabitats along their migration routes.

The need for the waystations is high. Monarch populations are still in decline after a peak in 1996, mostly because of habitat loss and climate changes, Taylor said.

More than 3,000 acres of potential habitat are lost every day to development, he said.

New farming practices have also reduced habitats.

Milkweed used to grow in limited amounts in soybean crops, but the introduction of genetically modified crops and the use of herbicides eliminated nearly 80 million acres of farmland as potential habitat, Taylor said.

People can create these habitats for monarchs, which isn’t something you can do for many other migratory species, Taylor said.

Monarch Watch is selling seed kits to grow the waystations via their Web site, www.monarchwatch.org. They cost $16.

More than one-fifth of the group’s total stock of kits has already been sold after being available for less than a week. Taylor and Sarah Schmidt, program assistant, are pleased by the positive response.

“It’s the gardening season, so people are becoming interested,” Schmidt said.

Taylor and Schmidt emphasized that the creation of waystations will do more than just provide shelter to monarch butterflies.

They hope to convince people that habitats are more than just large areas and can be as small as a backyard garden.