The Oregon Natural Desert Association will kick off its new High Desert Lecture Series on Monday, January 26 with an expert on the monarch butterfly – an insect known for its bright-orange wings and its amazing migrations of up to 3,000 miles between Canada and Mexico.
Join ONDA at 7pm at ONDA’s Bend office, 50 NW Bond St. Suite 4 (across the lot from Strictly Organic) for “Monarchs and Milkweed: An evening with Tom Landis.” The event is free.
Landis worked for 30 years as a nursery specialist for the U.S. Forest Service. He has since become an expert on monarchs, which typically pass through central and eastern Oregon in the summer.
Due to the insect’s large size and coloring, the monarch might be the most well-known butterfly in the world. However, over the last two decades the monarch population has significantly decreased, by 59 percent in Mexico and 90 percent in California, according to the nonprofit group Monarch Watch.
This decline is due in part to the disappearance of one of the monarch’s main food sources, milkweed. Landis will share the fascinating biology of monarch butterflies, their current situation and how the public can help. He now works to propagate milkweed and other nectar plants to help monarchs, and will share how the public can do it too.
These monarch way stations are intended to create a “milkweed railroad” along the butterfly’s migration routes. Way stations create breeding habitat for monarchs: food, shelter and water.
ONDA’s High Desert Lecture Series offers the chance to learn more about Oregon’s high desert from experts. The next talk is slated for April 7: Stu Garrett, co-founder of the local chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon, will talk about high desert wildflowers, just in time for hiking season.
The Oregon Natural Desert Association is a Bend-based nonprofit organization that has worked to protect, defend and restore Oregon’s high desert for more than 25 years. We’re actively working to protect stunning, ecologically significant areas in the Central Oregon Backcountry, John Day River Basin, Greater Hart-Sheldon Region and the Owyhee Canyonlands.
Learn more at
ONDA.org or about the event at ONDA.org/events.
