A couple Saturdays ago, a group of a dozen volunteers gathered on Ole Schell's family ranch in Bolinas – sleeves rolled to the elbows, ready to toil in the soil, all under the cause of aiding the deeply challenged monarch butterflies.
The group was tasked with planting 850 plants awarded to Schell in a grant through the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, a group devoted to helping to save bees and butterflies, among others.
A year-and-a-half ago, Schell began converting part of the ranch into a butterfly paradise, filling it with butterfly-friendly plants in an effort to lure them back to a territory that was once a main stop on their long migration.
"When I was a kid here in Bolinas, California had three to five million monarch butterflies," Schell said. "So my childhood was steeped with memories of monarchs dripping from eucalyptus trees."
With a narrow window between winter storms, the volunteers began carving into the landscape with spades to sow their allotment of goldenrod, California fuchsia and coyote mint, all favorites of the monarchs. The plantings are intended as an accompaniment to the ranch's stand of eucalyptus trees that's served as a traditional winter stopover for monarchs, before heading inland.
Western monarchs can use the assist. In 2020, Xerces' annual winter count at overwintering sites revealed their population had plummeted to below 2,000 – a startling number that sparked fears of their apparent nosedive toward extinction.
But this year's winter count, recorded over Thanksgiving and the New Year, tallied 300,000 returning butterflies across the state, raising hopes for their recovery.
"We haven’t seen those kind of numbers since fall of 2000, which is really incredible," said Isis Howard, an endangered species scientist with Xerces who helped with the planting.
A year after creating what he calls the West Marin Monarch Sanctuary, Schell has seen his own positive results. This winter the town of Bolinas recorded the return of more than 2,500 butterflies. But Schell didn't need a count to tell him of success. His own eyes witnessed large clusters of monarchs gathered in the property's eucalyptus trees once again.
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"It was a joyous experience to see them return," Schell said.
Schell had already planted hundreds of butterfly-friendly plants on his ranch before the Xerces grant, which is also available to homeowners. But Schell hasn't just enlisted humans in his efforts. He's also got a herd of Navajo-Churro sheep working on the problem. Schell used the sheep to clear thick brush to create even more space for new plants.
"What we’re able to do is plant native nectar plants in those openings," Schell explained. "And it’s a lot better than a tractor that would totally decimate sort of the micro-ecology of the area."
Schell is now setting his sites beyond his own ranch, helping other property owners around Bolinas to create their own butterfly corridors.
"Ole’s project is what we need right now," said Howard. "He’s getting folks from the community engaged and spreading the knowledge and advocating for monarch butterflies in his local community and beyond."
Schell isn't sure whether his planting efforts contributed to the resurgence of butterflies on the property, but perhaps collaterally, it's at least given a lift to the volunteers spending a Saturday wrestling with shovels on the hardscape.
"We can’t take credit for this," said Xerces volunteer Mia Monroe. "But we’re at least part of offering hope and really that’s what we can do."