Kids get hands-on butterfly lessons

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This article was published 19/07/2010 (5645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHILDREN in glittering face paint and construction paper butterfly wings flitted among the prairie grasses with the monarch butterflies Sunday.

Monarch butterflies are intimately tied to the quickly vanishing tall grass prairie landscape, and both kids and adults like to get up close and personal with them, said Kyle Lucyk, director of the Living Prairie Museum.

The Third Annual Monarch Butterfly Festival was held at the Living Prairie Museum and featured several family-friendly activities such as a guided prairie hike, butterfly gardening workshops, crafts and a butterfly release at the end of the day.

Lucyk said he estimated about 500 people stopped in throughout the day, and that the turnout has increased over the years.

“Response was great because everyone loves butterflies,” he said.

While the Living Prairie Museum used to have a festival to celebrate all insects, officials found turnout was best when they focused on the much-loved butterfly — the monarch in particular.

A monarch butterfly festival is the perfect way for the museum to get its conservational message across.

“When we destroy the prairie and reduce the diversity, a lot of these butterflies have nowhere to produce their young,” he explained.

With most of the tall grass prairie already lost, the museum encourages people to plant butterfly gardens on their property by growing plants such as milkweed, a monarch favourite, to provide a breeding ground for monarchs and other butterflies.

“You’re just giving them a place to live,” he said.

James Robson, at the festival with eight-year-old daughter Tamara, said his family’s been hosting butterflies for years now.

“We have a butterfly garden in our yard,” he said.

“I had a monarch on me before,” said Tamara, a young butterfly enthusiast who was decked out in paper wings and butterfly-themed face paint.

Robson said the garden was their way of helping the insects out.

“We read that the monarch was an endangered species,” he said.

While the monarch isn’t technically endangered, it has “special concern” status on the Government of Canada’s Species at Risk Public Registry, and Lucyk said severe loss of habitat does pose a large concern.

The Living Prairie Museum provides free, family-centred programming all summer. For more information go to www.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/naturalist/livingprairie/.

sandy.klowak@freepress.mb.ca