BROOKLYN, New York — When people imagine what nature looks like, this probably wouldn’t be it. On an overcast afternoon in August, I stood next to a strip of plants between the sidewalk and the street in Central Brooklyn, no more than a block from a six-lane highway. An ambulance wailed in the distance. It smelled of exhaust. This was New York City after all.
But this narrow patch of green was full of life — of what you might call nature. Furry bumblebees hovered around clusters of shaggy white flowers. Iridescent flies appeared and then disappeared, like flecks of glitter briefly catching the light. And on the underside of a few leaves were the unmistakable pinhead-sized eggs of a monarch butterfly, which look like tiny lemon candies.
Cities like New York are obviously not known for their wildlife. You won’t find wolves or jaguars or other charismatic megafauna strolling the streets or hunting in big city parks. But if you know what to look for and take a moment to observe your surroundings, you can find interesting and even rare animal species everywhere. I recently learned, for example, that NYC has more than 200 species of native bees, including the Gotham sweat bee — a species that scientists first discovered in the city.
In the summer and early fall, NYC is also home to a large number of monarch butterflies, America’s most iconic bug. Nationwide, these Halloween-colored insects are imperiled. Their population has declined so much in recent decades that the Biden administration proposed listing them late last year under the Endangered Species Act, a powerful environmental law that’s considered a last resort for species facing extinction. Yet in NYC, you can still find them all over — even in tiny patches of plants near a highway. This is a pretty strange situation: A species that may be federally protected in the same category as animals like sea turtles and manatees is fluttering around the largest and most densely populated city in the country.
How are monarchs holding on in New York when they seem to be in such steep declines nationwide?
Over a few weeks in August, I traveled to urban ecosystems across the city to try to answer this question. And along the way, I learned something valuable — that helping wildlife is a lot easier than you might think.
Why monarchs need help in the first place
Monarchs aren’t just nice to look at. They also lead miraculous, almost improbable, lives. Like many birds, whales, and caribou, monarchs migrate. Each fall, nearly all the butterflies that live east of the Rocky Mountains — including those in New York City — fly to the same grove of fir trees in the mountains of Central Mexico, often traveling some 2,000 miles. They ride out winter clumped together on the trees, often in such great numbers that they cause the branches to droop.
Their springtime behavior is even more remarkable: The butterflies migrate back north for the summer, but it takes them two to three generations to get there. The adults in Mexico will fly to the southern US, lay eggs, and die. Their offspring will complete the next leg, flying a bit further north. That happens again and again until the butterflies reach the northern US and parts of southern Canada, where they breed and their offspring start the process all over.
All kinds of mysteries surround this process — including how tiny-brained insects coordinate an intergenerational relay race — but what’s clear is that fewer butterflies are making it to Mexico. Each winter, scientists measure the number of acres occupied by monarchs in those fir trees. Between 1993 and 2002, the first 10 years of monitoring, butterflies were clumped on trees across an average of about 21 acres. That’s an area roughly equal to 16 American football fields. During this past winter, however, monarchs occupied just 4.4 acres.
Scientists blame these declines largely on the loss of milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat. Milkweed once grew abundantly throughout the Midwest in places like Iowa and Kansas, the core breeding range for monarchs. Yet in recent decades, herbicides sprayed by farmers on corn and soybean fields, which blanket the region, destroyed an enormous number of milkweed plants. Researchers estimate that between 1999 and 2014, herbicides and the destruction of grasslands for farmland, homes, and other infrastructure killed more than 860 million stems of milkweed in the Midwest. These chemicals — which farmers still use — also kill native wildflowers that provide food for adult monarchs, fueling their long migrations.
It’s no surprise, then, that conserving monarchs requires protecting what little milkweed remains, and planting more of it. That’s why NYC is important. Even though it’s built for humans and full of concrete and traffic, the city has been creating pockets of habitat that sustain monarchs and other native bugs. And if that approach can work here, it can work anywhere.
The surprising value of cities for monarch butterflies
While monarchs live complicated lives, their needs are fairly simple: milkweed plants for their larvae, or caterpillars, and pesticide-free wildflowers for the adults. “The average insect spends three-quarters of its life as a larva or an egg,” said David Lohman, an insect ecologist at the City University of New York. “The whole habitat for that part of the life for most insects, including monarchs, is a single plant.”
If seeded with the right plants — specifically, with native plants, those that evolved here — even small spaces in cities can meet those needs. For example, the patch of plants I visited in Central Brooklyn, part of a community garden called Prospect Farm, was only four feet wide, but it had more than a dozen stems of common milkweed. That’s where I spotted the monarch eggs: They were on the underside of the plants’ thick, oblong leaves. It’s hard to overstate the value of native plants, like milkweed or bee balm. They’re ecosystem anchors, drawing in native insects, which in turn draw in native birds, building out links in the food chain.
“It’s amazing that if I plant these plants, I’m automatically supporting pollinators or beneficial insects,” said Matthew Morrow, the head of horticulture at NYC’s Department of Parks and Recreation (NYC Parks), who says he’s known within the agency as the native plant proselytizer. “Run that up the chain, and I’m supporting bird life and other things that feed on all of these creatures.”
Until recently, native plants, other than trees, weren’t common in gardens, parks, and other green city spaces. Professional and home gardeners gravitated toward nonnative ornamentals, like daffodils and tulips, which were widely available in nurseries and bred to fit a conventional aesthetic: tidy and uniform with big flowers, bold colors, and a long bloom. Native plants, meanwhile, tend to have a different look, appearing messier and sporting subtler flowers. As important as common milkweed is for monarchs and other insects, for example, it looks, as its name might suggest, a bit like a weed, especially when it’s not flowering.
But attitudes are changing. For many years, scientists and environmental advocacy organizations have been trying to raise awareness about insect declines and the value of locally adapted plants. Those efforts are paying off: Gardeners in parks, suburbs, and city homes are now planting far more native plants. They’re also becoming slightly more comfortable with a wild aesthetic, in some cases even leaving sticks and dead leaves around because they know insects nest in them.
“My goal is to remove the invasives and to replant with native plants,” said Emily Stringer, a professional gardener at De Matti Park, a small green space in Staten Island. Native plants like mountain mint, a perennial with pale lavender flowers and mint-scented leaves, offer much more ecological value than some ornamentals, said Stringer, who works for NYC Parks.
She’s been transforming De Matti into a native plant refuge since the start of the pandemic, she told me, when I met her in the park on a hot August afternoon. “There’s a lot more life, no doubt about it,” Stringer said, speaking with a strong Staten Island accent.
During a brief walk through the park, I saw a dozen or so monarchs bouncing around the native flowers. At one point, something large and flying appeared in front of a cluster of purple flowers. It was the size of a golf ball, with a green head, a shrimp-like tail, and a comically long proboscis — the straw-like mouth part that insects use to drink nectar. Its wings moved so fast they were a blur, allowing it to hover. I later learned this was a hummingbird moth.
This shift to native plants is happening in all kinds of spaces across the city, including big parks, small parks, community gardens, and backyards. I even met a guy who does what he calls “guerilla gardening” in northern Manhattan. He plants milkweed and other native plants in parks and tree wells, typically without explicit permission from city officials. It’s these efforts that are helping sustain monarchs and other native bugs in New York.
“Every little bit counts,” said Keith De Cesare, a guerrilla gardener who also describes himself as an educator, artist, and naturalist. “No spot is too small.”
(I asked NYC Parks about Keith. A spokesperson told me that “guerrilla gardeners are often well-intentioned and deserve recognition,” but some of the species they plant might not be appropriate for the location. “Certain plants can grow too tall and obstruct sight lines, while others may fall over, creating potential slip and trip hazards,” the spokesperson told me.)
The native ecosystems of NYC
On a sunny morning in late August, I visited Brooklyn Bridge Park, an 85-acre public landscape along the East River, which separates Manhattan from Brooklyn. It’s one of my favorite spots in the city — a park near the Brooklyn Bridge built atop old shipping docks that looks onto downtown Manhattan.
My first stop was a small field of wildflowers on Pier 6, not far from the water. In the background was the Manhattan skyline, where helicopters buzzed like flies overhead, while in the foreground was a chunky monarch caterpillar. I watched the animal — an accordion of black, white, and yellow — chew its way through a milkweed leaf, and then another. It was seemingly oblivious to the fact that it lives in one of New York’s wealthiest areas.
As I moseyed along the edge of the flower field, I watched adult monarchs, too. They flew from flower to flower, moving up and down as if guided by a conductor, occasionally pausing on a milkweed leaf to lay a single egg.
Brooklyn Bridge Park is entirely human-made and built over what was essentially an industrial wasteland. But now it’s a complex ecosystem and a refuge for a number of important species, including monarchs. That ecosystem is rooted, unsurprisingly, in native plants: They’ve been a part of the park since it opened in 2010, and even more so now. During my visit, Evelyn Manlove, a horticulturist at the park, told me she chooses plants based in part on the insects they may attract, like milkweed for monarchs and curly everlasting, a perennial wildflower, for lady butterflies.
These city spaces are essential for animals, but they’re not just for them. They clearly help humans, too. Plenty of research shows that spending time in parks can lower stress and the risk of psychiatric disorders. Scientists have also linked listening to birdsong to mental health benefits — and native plants tend to attract more birds. I find that watching butterflies move through space or caterpillars chew through leaves is almost meditative. Maybe it’s the experience of awe. Maybe it’s the benefit of just drawing your attention to the present.
On another afternoon, I traveled further north in Brooklyn to a small patch of prairie near the Williamsburg neighborhood. The prairie, which is open to the public, is a green dot in an ocean of gray: To the east and south was the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a major highway, and to the west and north were warehouses, parking lots, and apartment buildings.
This space was once a cemetery for the US Navy. But long after it was decommissioned — the cemetery ran out of space and the Navy decided to close it and moved most but not all of the bodies to another cemetery — a nonprofit called Brooklyn Greenway Initiative turned it into a meadow. It’s an oasis of sorts, filled with more than 100 native plant species including common milkweed, coneflowers, and asters. From within the prairie, now known as the Naval Cemetery Landscape, you can hear cars honking and engines revving, but also the trill of a common yellowthroat — a yellow and green warbler — or the high-pitched cheep of a cedar waxwing.
The city-nature dichotomy offers something special, said Avvah Rossi, the head of horticulture for Brooklyn Greenway Initiative. And that something is best captured by a public notebook tethered to a bench in the meadow. It’s essentially a guestbook for visitors, and part of a project led by another organization, called Nature Sacred, to study the effect of green spaces on human well-being.
“Grateful for the softness and pause that nature provides us,” one person wrote. “When the world overwhelms, we can find comfort in nature’s resilience. We, too, can be the trees.”
“I feel less alone surrounded by nature,” wrote another. “I can feel the trees whispering to each other. I don’t understand them, but they make me feel included. It’s nice to be part of something.”
“Thank you, tree, for providing a space to piss on,” wrote a third person.
An environmental problem we can actually all help fix
It’s not like New York is some kind of insect sanctuary. Like any city, it’s full of concrete and traffic and light pollution that can make it hard for monarchs and other native bugs to survive. Monarchs use sunlight to navigate. Some moths, meanwhile, have been shown, rather incredibly, to navigate with the stars. Both of these feats are likely much harder in a city full of artificial light. Research also makes it clear that cities alone can’t save monarchs — rural areas, including agricultural lands, also need to play a role.
Yet urban pockets of native plants clearly help. That’s what I find so special about monarchs and other native bugs: It doesn’t take much to support them. Bringing back California condors or coral reefs is not something that normal people can easily do, or know how to do. But we can all help conserve monarchs and myriad other animals by simply planting some native flowers.
Earlier in the summer, I met a naturalist named Chris Kreussling at his home in Flatbush, a neighborhood in Central Brooklyn below Prospect Park. His place was easy to pick out since his front yard is basically a prairie.
Kreussling’s home is perhaps the best example of what one person can do for native insects in New York City. A garden of native plants envelops his brick home in bright yellows, purples, and pinks. “My garden is my main observatory,” said Kreussling, a retired software developer who loves bugs. “You can just see how much biodiversity there is.”
As we walked around the garden, Kreussling, who helps run a local organization to conserve pollinators, pointed out what I would normally miss. Weevils, tiny beetles with large snouts. The nests of cicada-killer wasps. Leaves with perfectly round holes made by leaf-cutter bees (the bees build nest cavities with the pieces). I was struck by the simple realization that this whole tangled world of life is invisible until you pay attention.
Kreussling told me that sometimes people ask him what he does about insect damage on his plants. “I celebrate it,” he told me. It means the garden is doing its job, he continued — it feeds life.
As we searched for critters, a monarch flew by and landed on a plant called ironweed, which has small purple flowers shaped like pom-poms. I hustled over to watch it feed as Kreussling continued looking for less obvious critters. Some scientists call monarchs the pandas of the insect world: They draw a lot of attention, and often overshadow less charismatic species.
That attention, however, is valuable, said Emily Erickson, an urban ecologist and monarch expert. It can inspire people to care about the natural world, she said, and the lesser-known and less charming creatures that inhabit it. “People seem to be more likely to do positive actions if they feel more connected to what they see flying around in their yard,” she said.
I don’t have a yard. I don’t even have a stoop. Can city-folk like me help, too?
While reporting this story, I learned about an organization called Monarch Watch that runs a butterfly tagging program to help monitor the monarch migration. The group sells tiny, lightweight stickers — the tags, each printed with a unique ID — designed to adhere to monarch wings. And each fall, volunteers around the country apply those stickers to monarchs as they’re traveling south. Then in the winter, Monarch Watch records the IDs they find on monarchs in Mexico. The data the group collects helps scientists figure out where monarchs are coming from and how many are dying along the way.
Tagging is a way for anyone to support monarchs, but first, of course, you need a butterfly. Volunteers often catch the insects in the wild with nets. I, however, decided to try to raise one in my apartment, a la elementary school activity.
On an August evening, I went to Central Park and found a monarch egg on a common milkweed leaf. I took it home and put the leaf in a Tupperware container in my kitchen.
By morning, the egg had hatched into a caterpillar. It was no larger than an eyelash, and every day, it doubled in size. When the caterpillar got too big for its exoskeleton, it’d wiggle out of it, eat the remains, and form a new one — a zero-waste bug! The caterpillar chewed through milkweed leaves so quickly that it became hard to keep its crucial food supply stocked. (Let’s just say there might be a few leaves and branches missing from milkweed plants in my neighborhood.)
One morning, when it was a little larger than a Tootsie Roll, I noticed the caterpillar hanging upside down from a leaf, like a sleeping bag pinned up to dry. Then it turned into a chrysalis, a hard shell that protects the insect as it transforms into a butterfly. It was like a theatrical costume change: Within minutes, the caterpillar had unzipped its old skin, revealing the emerald green chrysalis underneath.
About 10 days later, there was a butterfly. We — even my bug-unfriendly partner — were surprisingly excited. We had raised a butterfly! Her wings were missing two dots normally found on males, suggesting she was a female.
I delicately picked her up and carefully placed the sticker, which has a strong, pressure-sensitive adhesive, on her wings. We then carried her to a nearby park, hiked to a field of native wildflowers, and let her go.
She’s just one butterfly, and her chance of making it to Mexico is slim. A large portion of monarchs die along the way from car strikes, storms, and a lack of pesticide-free flowers from here to Central Mexico, underscoring the point that conserving migratory species can’t just happen in one place.
Still, it’s pretty remarkable that her journey begins here, in the nation’s largest city.
Before there were skyscrapers and parking lots and a crosshatch of city streets, New York was a wild place, a mosaic of coastal forests, prairies, and marshes. We’ve since changed the landscape in some irreversible ways that make it inhospitable to animals that once lived here. But as city gardeners and naturalists showed me, a little effort — a little green — can go a long way, benefitting us, monarchs, and other wildlife alike.
And if NYC can be a place where monarchs can flourish, so can anywhere. They really just need something to eat.
The post The most miraculous animal migration is happening in the middle of New York City appeared first on Vox.
