Monsanto Announces Multi-Year Commitment to Help Monarch Butterflies
01 April 2015 - 02:00AM
Business Wire
Monsanto Company announced today a $400,000 commitment to
partner with and support the efforts of experts working to benefit
monarch butterflies. This comes in addition to the company’s
earlier announcement of a $3.6 million grant to the National Fish
and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). Monsanto’s funding is part of the
company’s ongoing commitment to work with experts in support of
important biodiversity initiatives.
“Monsanto is committed to preserving and protecting the
biodiversity of our planet. While weed management has been a factor
in the decline of milkweed habitat, the agricultural sector can
absolutely be part of the solution in restoring it,” said Brett
Begemann, president and chief operating officer of Monsanto. “We’re
proud to collaborate with non-profits, universities, researchers,
farmers and others to find ways to improve and protect monarch
habitat across North America. It is clear that sufficient progress
cannot be made without action. Monsanto will work alongside others
to address this important element of biodiversity.”
Monsanto grants to the following organizations will support a
series of initiatives focused on both immediate and long-term
action in protecting biodiversity:
- National Fish and Wildlife
Foundation: Monsanto will match the initial $1.2 million pledge
from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the National Fish and
Wildlife Foundation Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund and provide
$2.4 million additional funding to match commitments from federal
agencies over the next three years. This support will be targeted
to provide habitat restoration, education and outreach and milkweed
seed and plant production.
- Monarch Watch: A nonprofit
education, conservation, and research program based at the
University of Kansas – focuses on the monarch butterfly, its
habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. This grant will enable
Monarch Watch to produce and make available milkweed plants free of
charge for landscape improvement, including buffer strips on
farm-lands, roadsides, rights of way, parks, public lands and
demonstration plots along the monarch’s migratory path – which
stretches from Mexico to Canada.
- Iowa Monarch Conservation
Consortium: The grant will help drive research to create
quality habitat, develop guidance and demonstrations for farmers to
cost-effectively improve and expand habitat, and monitor milkweed
and adult monarch populations to track progress. The Iowa Monarch
Conservation Consortium can serve as a model framework for other
state-level initiatives planning to implement monarch
conservation.
- Pheasants Forever: The grant
will lead to the planting of monarch and pollinator habitats at
more than 70 Monsanto research and manufacturing sites and
facilities located in the monarch breeding range. This includes the
creation of three Learning Center programs to demonstrate how to
establish sustainable monarch and pollinator habitat, which is also
the same habitat critical to upland birds. These programs engage,
enroll and educate farmers and communities to contribute to a
resilient monarch population.
- University of Guelph: The grant
will help to understand migration patterns and identify priority
areas for milkweed restoration in the United States and Canada so
that investments in habitat improvement are more successful.
- University of Illinois at Chicago,
Energy Resources Center: Researchers will use these resources
to identify and prioritize available public and private lands for
monarch habitat improvement using geo-spatial analysis. This
information will support the success of restoration programs by
considering habitat location, quality and cost across diverse
landscapes.
Beyond those funding commitments, Monsanto also encourages a
diverse group of public and private sector stakeholders to fully
participate in the Keystone Policy Center Monarch Butterfly
Collaborative – an effort to connect the agriculture supply chain
with conservationists, farmers, scientists and landscape
professionals from across the country to coordinate and scale
solutions to the challenges facing monarchs and other
pollinators.
As a result of the commitments, Monsanto will participate
in:
- Supporting expansion and improvement of
more than 10 million acres of quality, distributed habitat by
2025
- Funding additional efforts in 2015 and
thereafter by conservation groups to further restore sustainable
quality milkweed/pollinator habitat across the critical range for
monarch breeding and migration
- Providing 100,000 milkweed plants for
planting into priority landscapes where quality habitat is
needed
- Developing and adopting Best Management
Practices (BMPs) for quality habitat installation and landscape
improvement
- Reaching 100,000 growers with guidance
and BMPs for creating and protecting monarch habitat
- Implementing web-based monitoring and
reporting tools to track and measure progress annually
- Annually quantifying progress and
prioritizing on-going milkweed habitat restoration efforts
- Developing a county-level scoring
system to prioritize habitat restoration by 2016
- Organizing a rights-of-way workshop to
drive progress in this opportunity area
- Leveraging the capabilities of the
company’s scientists and applying advanced technologies in seed
treatments, seed manufacturing, distribution, and data science to
advance knowledge and improve the capacity and speed of delivery of
habitat restoration programs
- Annually reporting on Monsanto’s
progress toward the delivery of improved habitat restoration
technologies
- Building and helping to fund a broad
public-private partnership to restore monarch/pollinator habitat on
public and private lands in overwintering sites and throughout the
monarch breeding range
To learn more about Monsanto’s work to protect and conserve
natural resources, go to http://monsanto.info/sustainability.
About Monsanto Company
Monsanto is committed to bringing a broad range of solutions to
help nourish our growing world. We produce seeds for fruits,
vegetables and key crops – such as corn, soybeans, and cotton –
that help farmers have better harvests while using water and other
important resources more efficiently. We work to find sustainable
solutions for soil health, help farmers use data to improve farming
practices and conserve natural resources, and provide crop
protection products to minimize damage from pests and disease.
Through programs and partnerships, we collaborate with farmers,
researchers, nonprofit organizations, universities and others to
help tackle some of the world’s biggest challenges. To learn more
about Monsanto, our commitments and our more than 20,000 dedicated
employees, please visit: discover.monsanto.com and monsanto.com.
Follow our business on Twitter® at twitter.com/MonsantoCo, on the
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MonsantoBilly Brennan, 314-694-3665