Butterfly magnet: Milkweed takes root on Vale slag pile.

AuthorRoss, Ian
PositionSUDBURY

The mountainous slag piles at nickel miner Vale in Sudbury are becoming a favourite landing spot for one of nature's most threatened species.

A milkweed patch has also been established at the base of the waste industrial material on the periphery of the company's Copper Cliff smelter complex in an effort to attract and boost the declining monarch butterfly population.

Long considered a nuisance plant, milkweed has been disappearing fast in recent decades due to the use of chemical herbicides and deforestation. The plant is crucial to the survival of the monarch butterfly on its journey between Mexico and Canada. It's the only suitable plant for monarch to lay their eggs and is also a main food source of monarch caterpillars.

Lisa Lanteigne, Vale's manager of environment, soil and water, first noticed the hardy perennial growing naturally at her Manitoulin Island cottage.

"I fell in love with the plant at camp and you hear about the plight of the monarch and how they're reduced in numbers so significantly over the last 10 years, the numbers dropping from 550 million (in 2004) to 33 million (in 2013)."

Farmers along the monarch's 4,800-kilometre migratory flight-path have been largely eradicating milkweed from their fields of crops.

It's resulted in a grass-roots call to action across the U.S. for mass plantings of milkweed, a movement joined by the Obama administration in launching a plan last spring to increase the number of pollinators and monarchs by seeding habitat along the flyway between Texas and Minnesota.

"We've been trying to plant them over the last several years and seeds are hard to come by," said Lanteigne. "It's just not something that most people would want to plant in their garden."

Last year, 2,000 common milkweed I plants were special-ordered from a southern Ontario nursery and planted in a landscaped pond area in front of Vale's engineering building in Copper Cliff.

Pollinators such as birds, bees and other insects have airlifted the seeds into patches along Big Nickel Road to the northeast. Eventually, the environmental team will establish plots further along the slag piles and other areas of the company property.

"The idea now is to collect seeds from our own plants...

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