The case for monarch butterflies and helping their habitat - Sondra Cabell

Paul Yeager   Welcome in to the MtoM podcast, a production of Iowa PBS and the Market to Market TV show. And I really should say welcome in to one of my flower gardens. This is a plant that in a few weeks is going to bloom and it's going to attract some butterflies. Sometimes the monarchs will land here, and this is a fuel source as they head along the I 35 corridor, and I can't get much closer to the I 35 corridor. If you listen closely, you can hear the cars over there. They head from north to south each year as part of the migration and then they turn around and come back in the spring. But there's been fewer of them. You've read about that? Why is that we are going to get into the natural side of things today with Sandra Cabell. She is a naturalist in my home county of Buchanan County, Iowa didn't know her until today, when I had this conversation. She is going to tell us about the effort she has done in many, many states in her career, and what she's doing exactly, to help this population. And we're also going to get into the why do we need monarchs in the first place. And a big assistance that farmers can do the two can coexist. You don't see the milkweed in the field as much as you used to. There's a reason for that. But that doesn't mean that all is lost for the monarch. Here's our discussion this week. If you have any feedback for me, you can send me an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. And you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts because each Tuesday New episodes come out of this MtoM Show podcast which starts right now. I sure love that backdrop that you have there. So I recognize the milkweed. And I'm going to probably fail what the orange flower is what is it?

Sondra Cabell   So the orange is butterfly milkweed. And then the pink behind me actually is not the common milkweed that a lot of people think it is either. That's pretty milkweed or Sullivant’s Milkweed.

Paul Yeager   All right, so the how do I tell the difference between prairie and a different variety? 

Sondra Cabell   Well, Prairie has a very thick, almost succulent type of leaf to it. So it's very, very thick as compared to the common and the flowers are not quite as round of a ball as the Common Milkweed is. So the common milkweed has a very distinct almost round ball to it. And so it's and it's much more common, you're not going to see Solomon's very often.

Paul Yeager   Well, Prairie to me sounds more in the wild, is that a fair assessment?

Sondra Cabell   It probably is. Common Milkweed is very much a disturbance species. So it likes areas where it's mowed or hayed or grazed or planted. It does very well in those habitats and solvents is not going to tolerate disturbance very well. So a prairie would be a much better place for that.

Paul Yeager   Okay, so when you say disturbance, you mean by mowing or something, not just an a nuisance by someone walking by it.

Sondra Cabell   Right, exactly. So someone walking by is not going to disturb it very much.

Paul Yeager   Yeah, like if it's on a trail path or something like that.

Sondra Cabell   Yeah, and it probably would survive in a trail path, but it definitely likes areas where I mean like I mow next to this all the time, but I'm not mowing in that area. So I'm not cutting it off. Whereas if you cut off Common Milkweed it'll send up three or four other shoots and it will tolerate that very well and actually sometimes is that's why it's called a weed is because sometimes it does become weedy that way.

Paul Yeager   Alright, Sondra, I have I've already admitted Buchanan County is my home county. The picture behind me is Buchanan County. When did you come to Buchanan County.

Sondra Cabell   I came to be cannon County in 2001. But I grew up

Paul Yeager   so we didn't we weren't there at the same time. Okay, how'd you end up there?

Sondra Cabell   I ended up here with a job through the county conservation board system. And because it's close to my home so I grew up in Benton County so not very far away.

Paul Yeager   All right, fine, that's close enough. You can almost you can hit a couple of good drives, I get it. So conservation interest is that what you said your job

Sondra Cabell   was just my title naturalist. And whatever the European version where you go naked all the time. It's it's the educate people about nature virgin.

Paul Yeager   What got you interested in that?

Sondra Cabell   Kind of came upon my career accidentally so I've always enjoyed being outdoors. I went to college with at Iowa State with a biology major and not really knowing that this field even existed. After graduation, I took some classes at the University of Michigan Biological Station because I didn't know yet what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be and nothing had presented itself. And then that fall, I got a job with the University of Georgia environmental education residential program that they run down in Georgia and kind of fell into environmental education in the naturalist field that way and have been there ever since.

Paul Yeager   I love it when someone has all those states. So tell me the differences or similarity i Let's start with similarities in how they approach nature Iowa, Michigan, Georgia.

Sondra Cabell   And then we can add South Carolina and Kentucky to because I've perfect seven better and Minnesota actually. So you know, I think that the the similarities are that people are becoming much more disconnected from nature. And I saw that tremendously in Georgia, because we worked primarily with inner city, urban folks from the Atlanta and Augusta area. And so when those kids came out at night, they had never seen stars before, because they lived in the metropolitan area with all the light pollution. I worked in New York State and had similar systems where they came from the Tri states areas in the urban areas, and they came into the mountains, and just were not familiar with the outdoors. I see that less here in the Midwest, both in Minnesota and Iowa. And in Kentucky, where I was that I saw that less, there's more connection, there's still more tied to the natural areas. But I think that even here, I live in a town of 6000 people, and there's a lot of kids that don't go out into a natural area. So I think that that's the big thing. And it's making that connection, and understanding our connection with the natural world and why it is so important to us. That I think is the most important part of my job.

Paul Yeager   A town of 6000 that steeped in agriculture history, and it's tied to the farm, it's tied to agriculture heavily, which means you know, that your community is not an island. And you know, so does that mean that the naturalist job is never done?

Sondra Cabell   Oh, absolutely. And that's one of the one of the best things about the naturalist job, I think is that, you know, you have job security, first of all, because there's always something to learn. And I'm always learning, I'm always learning new things. And there's always new things coming out and coming about. And so it has to be something that you keep learning. On the other hand, I don't have to be an expert in anything, I can know a little bit about a lot of things and then just kind of rely on the experts in the field to fill in the differences.

Paul Yeager   So what's the best way to hook someone in and get their interest piqued, then when you have this gap that you speak of.

Sondra Cabell   So I think the best way to do that is to have something that everybody is familiar with. And the monarch butterfly is the perfect example of that, because monarchs don't care if you're in town, or if you're in the country, they don't care if you're in a farm area. Or if you're in a really undeveloped area. They are pretty ubiquitous. And not only are they ubiquitous here in the United States, but they have been introduced to other parts of the world so that people worldwide recognize and understand it, a monarchs called a charismatic megafauna, and they're really not very megafauna because they're only this big, but they're still an animal that everybody recognizes and loves. And when you can tie in something that somebody loves, and then build from that. I think that that's a great way to do it. Or you could have a pandemic, which was a great way to get everybody involved in nature as well.

Paul Yeager   Well, the reason that I even came to talk about you was my old second grade teacher, Dale Rueber, who had mentioned your work with monarchs and by golly, it might have been second grade, third, fourth, that was in elementary school, we talked about the monarch we and it was visually appealing to me. The caterpillar, the butterfly, the the milkweed plant, but then when I started to realize the milkweed plant can be a problem in you know, those farm fields. There's no that's I'm always I was always looking under the leaves to see if there was, you know, something going on or if the leaves were getting eaten. That was a good, it stuck with me. So how do you take Get that knowledge from then to how I can help you now.

Sondra Cabell   So you had an advantage on me because I mean, I probably learned about butterfly lifecycles and stuff in elementary school as well. And I have a vivid memory on my grandparents farm growing up of millions of monarchs on the windbreak one fall during their migration. But that's about all I have about monarchs until I got to college, and then actually raised a monarch caterpillar. So I'm guessing Dale maybe had monarchs in his classroom, where you got to see the lifecycle. And monarchs are very, very well suited to that because they go through their egg to butterfly cycle and about 28 days. So even young kids that can hold their attention and keep their attention, and they can see how that happens. Because it's fast. And so that is one way that we work to do it. At our nature center, we have always caterpillars and eggs, not the eggs that people see all the time, but we collect eggs, and then raise the caterpillars. And we have a few caterpillars on the milkweed. And we provide free milkweed seed and talk about how you can plant milkweed. So in my garden right here, behind me, I live in town, I live in an urban area, and I have over 200 milkweeds in my yard, and it does not look like it is a prairie. It is in maintained gardens. So I think that the the hook is yes, this butterfly is there it is in trouble. It is in current negotiations as far as what the status of the monarch butterfly is going to be going forward here. Within the next year, there's going to be a decision made by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And I think that the best thing we can do is to just be aware of what is needed by this butterfly, and not remove all of its habitat requirements, not remove everything that it needs, not keep everything I pulled milkweeds in my yard all the time, but not remove everything that it needs.

Paul Yeager   So when you say the Fish and Wildlife Service, are they talking about putting it on the endangered list?

Sondra Cabell   So in 2014, the US Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned by a number of organizations to consider the monarch butterfly for listing in the threatened and endangered species category. In the year 2000, they determined that there was enough science to show that that was warranted. But they went with a status that's called warranted but precluded, which basically means that they didn't have enough money at that time, to put towards the requirements that would be needed to manage the butterfly under the Endangered Species Act. That qualification means that by 2024, they have to reassess and make a determination. And there, there are a lot of experts in the field, who have varying thoughts on how that should happen. And whether it should happen. It's it's certainly it's certainly a fact that their populations have declined drastically by over probably 90% Since the late 1990s. Whether or not that is a historical population decline, or whether that always happened is less obvious, because there's not good numbers prior to about the 1980s. Certainly, during the Dust Bowl, there would have been a lot less monarchs just because of the weather conditions at that time. We know that monarchs can bounce back, they can lay 700 eggs per female. So they can bounce back quickly if conditions are right. And the monarch is not going to probably become extinct, because it's found in so many other parts of the world. But the listing is looking at the monarch migration, those butterflies, particularly from eastern North America, that migrate to Central Mexico over the winter time. And that migration by some is is doomed. Some experts say it doesn't matter what we do, it's doomed. It's not going to it's not going to be able to survive, primarily because of climate change. And then there's others that say, it's recovered from a lot worse. So I my personal thought is if you create it as a threatened or endangered species, and as it's now listed in California, then you say that people can't interact with that species at all. They can't raise it in the classroom. They can't To even you know, protected in their backyard or bring Caterpillar into their home to raise it, they can't tag the butterfly and and record where it goes in the wintertime because it's a threatened or endangered species, then you're taking away that connection that people have. And that may be worse than if we did nothing. So I, I'm on the fence.

Paul Yeager   Well, and I sensed early in your answer, you were trying to walk a tiny fine line there. When you said, the fact is the numbers are lower. But how they fit into the cycle of high low and will this come back? I get that there's the debate there. I guess let's let's look at some of the arguments on how we got to a less population. Well, there's one thing to blame is it production areas,

Sondra Cabell   no argument on how we got to where we're at from the 1980s to now. It's and that is fat loss. It is habitat loss in the North American production area, which is the Corn Belt states of the United States. Prior to the introduction of herbicide tolerant crops, the primary way of removing weeds in a field was to disc them to cultivate cultivation on milkweed cuts off the top, but the roots thrive on that. And they will send up many more shoots. And so monarch habitat was everywhere, because the milkweed would come back and it was everywhere. And so there were large, large numbers of monarchs during that time period, because they utilize those corn and bean fields and the milkweed. That was there. With the advent of the herbicide tolerant crops, the spray will not kill milkweed the first time, but by the second time, the milkweeds die. And so over 40 million acres of farmland that was active monarch habitat was lost. And so the the decline in the populations from 1997, when that was early in the process through 2008, where pretty much was blanket widespread use were drastic, from 2008. Until the present, the decline has been up and down, and not as drastic. So we know that that was the window that the huge decline happened. And that was what was happening at that time. So that's the big the big drop in in habitat.

Paul Yeager   Is there a way that production agriculture can coexist with or find a place for the milkweed to grow and have that habitat for the monarch?

Sondra Cabell   It there certainly are many opportunities one of the main ones back in 2000, when the US Fish and Wildlife Service was petitioned or made their decision just before that, there was a huge flood of money from the federal government into the CRP program for monarch and pollinator restoration habitats. And there was huge numbers, especially along the I 35 corridor, where much of the monarch production and migration takes place, and huge amounts of money were put into that. And that was very helpful. The populations had gotten down to they measure populations of Monarch butterflies in hectares of overwintering habitat in Mexico, and the population had gotten down to about two thirds of a hectare, which a hectare is the metric equivalent of about two and a half acres. And so there was, you know, about an acre and a half of Monarch butterflies overwintering in these trees. Estimates are maybe 21 million monarchs per hectare. So that's still a lot of monarchs. But it was way down from the 20 hectares that had been in the 1990s. And so the

Paul Yeager   where was I at? I don't even know what I'm, well, we were discussing about, you know, the population in Mexico how it has changed and we we know that the Hector's are fewer and far between. Was it the Mexican officials that prompted the first alarm of hey, we don't have near the butterflies that we had.

Sondra Cabell   It was probably a three count that three country thing. They're measured in Mexico because they're all in one place in the wintertime. So it's an easy measurement tool. But we know that the numbers that arrive in Mexico come from Canada and the United States. So we need to have that production happening here. They won't be there. And so it's it's done. finitely a three country collaboration in a lot of ways. Of course, some countries have more money and more resources and fewer problems to try and address to deal with it. But all three countries are working towards maintaining the population.

Paul Yeager   I guess I skipped a major part of this, what's the why is this important that we have monarchs?

Sondra Cabell   You know, there are people that argue that it's not. And just like any other thing, in creation, everything is there for a reason, and everything ties to everything else. And just because we may not know that reason, or understand the connections, doesn't mean it's not important. Aldo Leopold, one of our great conservationists in the state of Iowa said that the first rule in tinkering is to keep all the parts and just about any farmer, I know, will understand that because you know, they've tinkered with a lot of things. And it's the fact that they have this thing over here that, oh, I know, now I can use that for this or whatever. That is so important. And do we know what part exactly monarchs play? You know, they have a lot of roles. They are a pollinator, they're not a hugely important pollinator probably they're not out there doing our food production pollination. But they're also an indicator species. So as the monarch goes, so goes, the bees, and so go those active pollinators because they require those same habitats. And so I think maybe an indicator species is a very important role for them, but also an ambassador species. They're the ones that people recognize, they're not going to protect some little teeny tiny bee that they don't see or recognize, but they're willing to protect and to spend the effort and the money on on the butterflies. So

Paul Yeager   they're the red coat from the Chamber of Commerce, the gladhands. Everybody in the bank that does the work or the small business that does the work. I got you. I love that. That's great. Sandra, what do you you mentioned indicator or pollinator? A couple of years ago, I did a there was the the push for the no mo May and then all of a sudden, in a short year, we had the you know, that might not work? What if you do this instead? So it sounds like those types of things are quickly evolving? Of what is the best assistance? I mean, I guess, did you participate in no moment where

Sondra Cabell   we were going when I think that's maybe where we were going when I kind of lost my train of thought.

Paul Yeager   So I lose it all the time, Sondra, it's

Sondra Cabell   more and more. So one of the things what what can people do is tied to that no moment you talked about, so maybe not in an urban area. No Monet and you know, mow your yards, I don't know that that is, is it's huge for those early pollinators that need the dandelions and the clover, if you haven't already sprayed your lawns. So I think that the two things that I see as being things that the everyday average person, no matter where you're at, can do two to help both pollinators and the monarch butterflies, one plant milkweed, so you can plant that anywhere. And it doesn't need to take up much more than a five gallon bucket of space. So plant milkweed to leave as much natural habitat as you can. So for instance, in the state of Iowa, a landowner is legally able to mow the area immediately in front of their house. But legally ditches along other parts of their property are not to be mowed at least until July 15. And I would say, Don't mow those at all leave that habitat. That is the habitat that remains after the fields have been cultivated. And yes, it's not going to look like a golf course if you don't mow it. But what do we need golf courses along all of our roads for so leave those habitats that are possible to be left don't mow your ditches. That's like a huge one for me. So don't mow the ditches, plant milkweed. And then the third one is use less chemicals whenever you can. production agriculture is never going to get away from chemical use of pesticides. And it's probably an argument that, you know, there's a lot to be said on both sides of the fence but in your lawns Do you really I mean there has been tests done on people's houses where they treat their lawns versus where they don't treat the lawns and the chemicals you bring into your home from treat In your lawns to get rid of the clover and the dandelions and those other plants that are not a monoculture in your lawn are in your house. And do you really want your kids and your pets playing on those types of things? And when I see signs on, especially on school yards where it says, don't play on this grass, it's just been sprayed. Why? Why do we do that? Why do we introduce our kids to those chemicals? Why do we introduce our pets pets to those chemicals just to have no dandelions and no clover. I mean, those things are not hurting the lawn in any way. And in this time of drought, you can say that there may be helping the lawns if you go around and you look at people's lawns where it's been sprayed, and it's a monoculture. They're much browner than those that have the clover or the dandelions in them. So I would say those three things plant milkweed don't spray whenever possible and don't mow the ditches.

Paul Yeager   I can tell you that the the elementary school a couple of blocks from my house has plenty of clover, it's fine. It hasn't been sprayed for clover. That's good. My mom's the homeplace here behind over there. Is is is free, it has clover, and the ditches that same ditch, I don't know why I'm so backwards here, that ditch, that's fine, that doesn't get mowed. So those are some areas. But if there's a strip here in there, that maybe a farmer might mow just for aesthetics, maybe let that go. That might

Sondra Cabell   area in front of your house. Yeah, safety reasons. Like if you're turning the corner and you need visibility, yeah, you need the mower, you need to mow some areas. I'm not saying don't mow everything, but leave more stuff. I mean, my dad has farmed for years. And I know that a lot of what he mowed now is because he no longer had to be out in the field disking during the spring and early summer, and so he was looking for something to do. And so he started milling. And I think that that's the case in a lot of situations is like these, these folks that had been doing that for years and years and years that was a part of their their process was being active in the field during the spring and summer. They were looking for something to do.

Paul Yeager   I remember a couple of years ago, it maybe it was pre pandemic, year on RAGBRAI. On the registers annual great bike ride across Iowa, there were groups that were handing out like seed balls, and they wanted them to chuck them in the ditches as they rode through the state. Not always the most popular plan, but it might have worked to spread some wildflowers, including the milk. See,

Sondra Cabell   I think that that was probably the best thing about that was awareness, raising awareness. I don't know how much milkweed actually was established because of throwing those seed balls. But they certainly raised awareness and made people aware of the fact that we need milkweed that we can help plant milkweed and that everyone can be involved. So did it help produce more milkweed in the ditches, I don't know that anything has been done to be able to say yes or no on that. But it certainly raised awareness.

Paul Yeager   Well, and I know the farmer that says they want to clean field, and they will spray and clean it or they'll go pull and clean it. And there and that does cut down on yield. When there's competition with weeds. I think you and I both talked before we recorded We both used to have to go in and pull weeds or cut weeds and fields and and and that still exists today. I know farmers that will see something and they might stop the pickup, hop in the field 20 yards and go get that button weed or whatever they see that slipped through.

Sondra Cabell   And you know, I guess at this point, I don't argue with that at all. I don't think it's it's worth the time and effort to try and stop. To stop that. I think that it's the other habitats that we need to look at, if we're going to if we're going to choose that in our fields, okay. But then let's look at those areas that are not our fields that don't look at yields, and make some concessions there. So that's where you know, maybe the ditches can be your concession. Yes, you're going to Springfield, but the ditches your concession and you're willing to make that available. One of the places that has been suggested would be a good area is waterways and I am not sure that I'm sold on the waterways idea primarily because and I know that the usage has declined but the seed treatments that contain the the neonicotinoid neonicotinoids are are water soluble. And those chemicals, because they're water soluble, you're going to be in our waterways. And so if we're promoting the growth of milkweed in our waterways, then we're actually perhaps making a sink, making a place where monarchs will lay their eggs and there will be no survival there. So I'm not sold on the fact that we should promote milkweed in our waterways, I think our ditches are, are even questionable in some ways because of that. But the chemicals traveled much more in the waterways than they would in the ditches. So you can have the fields, you can have the ditches, but give the wildlife give the butterflies or you can have the waterways in the fields, but give the wildlife the ditches.

Paul Yeager   That's fair. And I think you could have a fun campaign with words that rhymes with ditches might get you a lot more publicity than you're looking for Sondra, you said in in Buchanan County, which is the size of most counties in Iowa, you have 41 different sites is that Did I hear that number right that you are involved in

Sondra Cabell   in County Conservation manages 41. Parks and properties with throughout the county, some of them so now, it's about an acre, maybe even a little less than an acre. And some of the largest one is around 350 acres I believe.

Paul Yeager   So even on those one acre plots of will, for the lack of better term plot strips of land is that somewhere you've been able to Plant some milkweed. And, you know, maybe if it's in a corner or on a fence line, or somewhere to kind of help promote the growth.

Sondra Cabell   So one of our smallest parks that an acre and a half is Bryantsburg Prairie. And that park is sandwiched between highway 150. And a gravel road. It's a little wedge of a piece of property. It stays kind of wet, and it is a native prairie. So we don't plant anything there. But there is milkweed there. And we do have I do a monarch larva monitoring there, which I've done weekly since 2008. At that property, where I count the number of Monarch eggs and caterpillars and any chrysalis those are adults, I find. But the best thing about that property for monarchs is that it has a huge population of meadow blazing star. And so you know, we spent a lot of time talking about milkweed. But monarchs also need fuel for their trip to Mexico. So they need nectar that they can utilize to provide their energy as they fly over 1000 1700 miles from our area, straight line, and Monarchs don't fly in a straight line to Mexico. So the metal blazing star is the number one plant that I would recommend for planting for fall migration for the butterflies. It is a native prairie plant to the Midwest. It has a bloom period of about mid August through mid September, which is about when the monarch butterflies are migrating. And I have yet to find a place anywhere where if you have even a single plant, you will not have monarch butterflies even in the years when monarch populations have been lowered during their migration. There are there are butterflies on that plant.

Paul Yeager   This year is the name of that plant again, 

Sondra Cabell   meadow blazing star. So meadow blazing star and rough blazing star are probably the two species they're a tall purple spikes plant three to four feet high. They have a bald underground, so like a tulip bulb. They have an underground bulb that develops over two to three years and then is perennial thereafter for their long lived. And then those bulbs can get to be as big as a potato over time. And they might produce three or four or five flower stalks off of a single bulb. And then each flower stock will have depending on the weather, you know, hundreds of flowers up and down the stock this year. The stalks are shorter because it's been a dry early season and so the production of the flowers is lower. But it has been the number one plant to attract monarch butterflies and we have a lot of it at Brian's bird prairie. So we do a lot of tagging at that prairie, even though it's an acre and a half and it's between a highway and the gravel road. We have 1000s of kids in Buchanan County have been through that prairie collecting and tagging monarch butterflies,

Paul Yeager   which is something you have done you do a lot of that that same tagging process and now did i When you said if this becomes a an endangered species that will limit your ability to tag is that right?

Sondra Cabell   It may, it's yet to be determined. I mean, they could, they could do a lot of different things, they could make it where it's a threatened species. And they would allow, take, because take is any capture of even if you don't kill it, and then they may say completely hands off, not allow anything. So it they have a lot of leeway and what their decision would entail. And until a decision is made, nobody will know what that entails. But the monarch tagging program was originally to determine where monarchs went where they spent the winter and it was originally started out of the University of Toronto in Canada. And they had a tag that they folded over the top wing of the butterfly. So the top wing, they would have a piece that folded over this edge of the butterfly's wing. And it had a unique number on it. And then if somebody found it, they could report it back with a phone number that was on the tag as well. In 1992, most of the tagging went to the University of Kansas, through their program at Monarch Watch. And they have gone through a series of different tags, but spent three years with the 3am company developing an adhesive, that would stay that was a pressure based adhesive. So when you push it on it stays, and that would tolerate wind and rain and all the conditions that monarchs are in. And so that tag has been used for for quite a while now. So this is what that tag looks like these little circles here, have a single tag on them. And they have three lines printed on them. The individual identification number for the butterfly, the Monarch Watch information to send something to if you find it. And what is the third line? No, it just says Monarch Watch. And so that information is on the tag. And we have been I have been tagging since 1987. First through the University of Toronto, and since through the University of Kansas, I have tagged in Minnesota, in Georgia and South Carolina and Kentucky and in Iowa. So I have information from a lot of places with myself and the people who have come to program. So I've tagged over 15,000 Monarch butterflies over 10,000. And we have had 425 I believe I got to look up that number for sure. 245 recovered monarchs, so monarchs that somebody else has found so that's not a high percentage, right? 245 out of 15,500. But better than the lottery,

Paul Yeager   right? Better than the lottery and better than when I sent that hot air or that helium balloon in the in the sky elementary school that may have been any of that yeah, message in a bottle or something like that. Yeah. Well, Sondra, I greatly appreciate the time. Thank you so very much for the insight on this and the discussion. And I'm now going to look up and see if the plant I have is blazing star in the back. I have a plant that does attract monarchs and I've even webcam that before because it's just kind of fun to watch. So just again, it always adds I love adding to the discussion.

Sondra Cabell   And that's the best way to get the message out there is to just continue to discuss it and people don't have to totally agree on everything I wish we would get that message across in more arenas than than this but you know, we can we can discuss things and and talk about things in a civil manner and disagree about certain parts but still agree about other parts and you know, it's the areas we agree and we can find common ground that make things best.

Paul Yeager   Alright, Sondra, thank you so very much.

Sondra Cabell   You're welcome. You have a great day.

Paul Yeager   My thanks to Sondra Cabell for her time from Buchanan County, Iowa. She's a naturalist there next week, a new episode comes to you on Tuesday like it does. You want to go back and see what else is in the archives. We always welcome a good deep dive. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.