REGIONAL- In a win-win Tuesday for monarch butterflies and St. Louis County, the board of commissioners approved an agreement that will provide more butterfly habitat along the county’s roadways while protecting future county operations should the monarch be designated as endangered.
The awkwardly-named Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for the Monarch Butterfly on Energy and Transportation Lands (CCAA) was developed in 2020 through a collaboration between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the University of Illinois-Chicago and a partnership of more than 30 energy and transportation companies and organizations. It’s designed to promote the use of right-of-way for habitat for monarch butterflies, which have dwindled dramatically in population in recent years.
By joining the agreement, the St. Louis County Public Works department will commit to implementing several conservation practices for butterfly habitat (from which other pollinators will benefit as well) along at least five percent of roads they maintain, which works out to roughly 150 miles of the approximately 3,000-mile system. In exchange, the agreement gives the county the right to follow through with future plans that would otherwise have to be halted if the monarch is declared an endangered species.
“We absolutely have to do this because if the monarch gets listed (as endangered) it could affect our ability to not only do projects that involve disturbing vegetation areas, but also to do maintenance, mowing, tree removal, things like that,” said Public Works environmental engineer Carol Andrews. “Those are things we have to do for our core responsibilities to maintain safe roads for the traveling public.”
And such a listing for monarchs may be coming soon, Andrews said.
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing decision is expected by Sept. 30, 2024,” Andrews said. “If they go right to endangered, which is the highest, most restrictive status, then you can’t touch the monarch, you can’t touch its habitat without getting a permit, unless you’re covered under something like this CCAA. I’m glad they used this, because the idea is to incentivize people who are in a position to protect or improve the habitat to do something sooner rather than later.”
By signing up for the CCAA, the county will be able to avoid problems such as they encountered in 2015 when the northern long-eared bat was listed as threatened.
“We had a project we were working on that got delayed, and it cost us a lot of money for cancellation of contracts,” Andrews said. “It wasn’t only about the bat but that was a contributing factor. All of a sudden, were told the trees couldn’t be cut on the project site. We didn’t know that was coming so we couldn’t plan ahead, and it was a scramble, to put it lightly, for a lot of projects, and especially for one it really delayed. And those delays are very costly.”
Proposed practices
The CCAA contains a list of habitat conservation practices that the county can choose from to implement. Planning for the application started in earnest in 2021, and Andrews said they’ve narrowed down to some target activities that fit well within the department’s regular activities and assessed needs. They will have a year to develop a full implementation plan, which will include specific areas to be targeted.
One option the county will use is to adjust the times when road right-of-ways are mowed. The back slopes of roadway ditches are typically mowed once a year, Andrews said.
“By waiting until after October when the monarchs have migrated away is one way to avoid disturbing them,” she said. “To be honest, there’s plenty of back slopes that we don’t mow for several years. That might be where we say, ‘Don’t mow them this year, that’s part of our five percent.’”
Because the in-slopes closest to the road are mowed to make wildlife such as deer more visible for safety reasons, that mowing will continue as usual, Andrews said.
Another strategy to create more meadow-like spaces for butterfly habitat is cutting trees that have grown up too close to roads.
“We used to do a lot of that, and then with tight budgets we got way behind on that,” Andrews said. “It’s just that area like 20 feet on either side, so we’re not talking about huge forest, it’s just trying to keep the area next to the road cleared. It would be like a meadow opening in the forest with flowers that bloom all different times of the year, and especially milkweed.”
Trimming and cutting trees back from roads has other benefits as well, Andrews said. Cutting trees allows more sunlight to fall on roads, which means in the winter less salt is necessary to prevent icy roads. And removing bigger trees provides an additional level of safety for drivers, as more drivers are injured or killed in accidents where a car leaves the road and strikes an object than in multi-car accidents, Andrews said. And of course, cutting isn’t done without first assessing and minimizing the potential impact to birds and bats, she said.
A third strategy involves increasing successful vegetation restoration in areas where the habitat has been altered due to construction projects. Native flowers and grasses planted for cover often succumb after a year or two from the invasion of noxious weeds
“One of the things I’ve been pushing for is doing better monitoring of those newly seeded area to try to increase our rate of success,” Andrews said. “Getting the native seeds to establish helps with stormwater runoff prevents erosion, prevents downstream flooding, and in the meantime if you plant something that’s flowering all year that provides nectar for monarchs and other butterflies.”
Andrews said a common question she hears is why would you try to attract butterflies to the side of a road.
“There are definitely butterflies that get hit by cars,” she acknowledged. “But if you quadruple the number of monarchs by improving their habitat, sure, a little more will get hit, but you’re still getting a significant gain. And if they have a good, continuous supply of floral resources on one side of the road, they tend to stay on that side.”
Being a partner in the CCAA comes with a cost. The county will pay $8,000 annually to the University of Illinois-Chicago, the project manager, for oversight and access to outreach and education resources for habitat preservation best practices.
“They serve as a resource to help us find the best, most cost-effective way to meet the requirements,” she said.
It’s also estimated that the county will invest about $2,000 annually in labor costs to implement the program.
The county also has the option to change the designated program areas from year to year, which will mesh well with the types of activities they’re proposing to do. Andrews said they’ll be mapping proposed areas for the initial implementation plan.
“A lot of this is some things we’re already doing, but we need to be intentional about it and educate our staff,” Andrews said.
St. Louis County is only the third county in the state to sign on to the CCAA, along with Kandiyohi and Polk counties. A quick review of partners listed on a CCAA project map appears to indicate that Minnesota is the only state thus far where county governments have signed up. The Minnesota Department of Transportation is also a CCAA partner, and two Minnesota energy companies, East Central Energy and Northern Natural Gas, have also signed up.
Right now, about 815,000 acres of right-of-way properties are enrolled in the program, but the potential for increasing that number as the listing deadline approaches and more entities sign on is huge, Andrews said.
“This is a national agreement. If you add up the numbers, it really does add up, even at that five percent along roads,” Andrews said. “And, also, this applies to utilities. It’s millions of acres that could be enrolled. That’s pretty cool.”