Calling all group scientists: come to the Killarney Butterfly Depend
For its twenty fifth 12 months, Killarney Provincial Park is internet hosting an Annual Butterfly Depend.
And if you happen to’re heading to Killarney on July 12, 2025, we’d like your assist!
Killarney’s Butterfly Depend is a part of the North American Butterfly Affiliation (NABA) Depend Program.
The knowledge collected by park employees and volunteers helps monitor butterfly populations. The occasion additionally provides butterfly lovers an opportunity to socialize, have enjoyable and lift public consciousness about butterflies.
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Why are we counting butterflies?
Butterflies and moths are indicators of the well being of ecosystems. Areas wealthy in butterfly and moth variety are wealthy in different invertebrates. This number of bugs supplies a variety of environmental advantages, together with pollination and pure pest management.
An necessary ingredient of the meals chain, moths and butterflies are prey for birds, bats and different insectivorous animals. Butterflies are extensively utilized by ecologists as mannequin organisms to research the influence of habitat loss and local weather change.
The information we accumulate from the butterfly rely will probably be submitted to NABA to check issues like species distribution, environmental circumstances, and habitat modifications to see if any long-term modifications are occurring to our butterfly populations (and — by extension — within the ecosystem).
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What sort of butterflies will I spot?
Among the butterfly species you would possibly see embody:
- Peck’s Skipper
- European Skipper
- Clouded Sulphur
- Cabbage White
- Little Yellow
- Checkered White
- Bronze Copper
- Silvery Blue
- Banded Hairstreak
- Summer time Azure
- American Woman
- Monarch
- Mourning Cloak
(Don’t butterflies have nice names?)
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Okay, however I’m not a butterfly professional…
No worries. We’re lucky sufficient to have many skilled butterfly lovers who will probably be main our teams for the butterfly rely.
It’s not essential to have any prior information of butterflies to participate.
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I wish to assist!
The first step: e mail us at killarneydiscovery@ontario.ca to register for the July 12 (9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) occasion.
Volunteers ought to deliver a bagged lunch, loads of water, a hat, and sunscreen. For those who’ve obtained a butterfly identification area information and a internet, these can be helpful to deliver as effectively. If not, the park has some obtainable to mortgage.
We will probably be assembly at 9:00 a.m. on the Nature Centre the place volunteers will probably be cut up into groups.
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I’m not free that day — can I nonetheless assist the butterflies?
Completely.
Listed here are a couple of pro-butterfly actions you may take by yourself:
- Don’t use pesticides in your backyard at house. Herbicides (weed-killers) that include glyphosate kill helpful meals and host crops (like milkweed) that butterflies and moths rely on
- Plant native flowering crops akin to Milkweed, Butterfly Bush, asters, and Bee Balm in your backyard to offer butterflies with habitat and a meals supply. NABA has some nice recommendations on the fundamentals of butterfly gardening
- Make day by day a butterfly rely. Report your sightings on apps like Monarch Watch and iNaturalist
