Merkely Announces Funding To Protect Pollinators

The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is spending nearly $560,000 on efforts to improve habitats for the Monarch Butterfly in Oregon and California. 

“Protecting monarch butterflies is an urgent issue that requires sustainable solutions,” said Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who secured additional western monarch conservation funding as Chairman of the Interior, Environment & Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in the fiscal year 2022 appropriations bill. “If we let the western monarch butterfly go extinct, we’ll lose an iconic, beautiful species, and an important pollinator, forever. I am happy to see more projects come to fruition that will help ensure future generations are able to enjoy the monarch butterfly.”” 
 

Overall, the Monarch and Pollinator Fund will send $1 million 16 projects nationwide.  The three in Oregon and California total $557,600.  Local projects include: 

• Monarch Joint Venture: $207,700 to help expand the California Working Lands Free Seed Program to include Oregon and provide technical assistance, seed mixes, and milkweed seedlings to public lands, private working lands, and private non-working lands including businesses, corporate campuses, school campuses, community sites, and solar energy sites in California and Oregon. 
• The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation: $175,000 to help increase habitat by expanding the Monarch and Pollinator Habitat Kit Program and provide technical assistance to 40 land managers on public and private lands in California and the Willamette Valley region of Oregon. 
• Pollinator Partnership: $174,900 to help improve habitat for monarch butterflies by providing technical support to agricultural producers on private working lands in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, Columbia Plateau, and Southern Oregon regions as well as regions in California 

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