by Sophia Goss, November 2024
The Institute for Applied Ecology’s southeasternmost restoration project is located in the Permian Basin, America’s largest and most prolific oil basin. This area, situated near Carlsbad, New Mexico, accounts for nearly 40% of the country’s domestic oil production. The Bureau of Land Management’s Carlsbad Field Office (CFO) approves 40% of the Bureau’s environmental assessment (EA) permits, most of which are related to oil and gas. Field offices like CFO struggle to find capacity for proactive conservation because of time and resources dedicated to oil and gas permitting. While these areas arguably have the highest need for restoration, restoration projects can be difficult to accomplish for this reason.
In 2022, an IAE employee working as a contract botanist for the CFO submitted a proposal to the BLM to enhance one acre of breeding and nectaring habitat for Monarch butterflies on the Black River in southeastern New Mexico. The project was funded!—and IAE and BLM staff started planning plant grow outs and discussing technical restoration techniques for this arid landscape. The project’s success was quickly confronted with unanticipated concerns from CFO staff and local farmers. Questions arose about the consequences of planting milkweed—which may be toxic to cattle and humans if consumed in large doses—on the river, and the potential for it to spread outside of the planted area into neighboring alfalfa farms. The project was put on hold until 2024 when these concerns began to be addressed—and there was capacity to continue the project.
In January 2024, seeds collected from the Seeds of Success (SOS) and Southwest Seed Partnership (SWSP) programs were put into nursery production at Conley’s Nursery, located in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Extending a relationship with Conley’s Nursery allowed the SWSP to expand their network of growers and farmers into southeast New Mexico, increasing availability for local plug production for the southeastern portion of the state, an area that until just this year did not have any nursery partners within the Southwest Seed Partnership.
After several coordination meetings and discussions about planting locations, the appropriate permits were authorized, and a group of IAE and BLM staff from across the state planted 1,250 plugs on the Black River last month! On the last day of planting, a Monarch flying down the river smelled the milkweed and landed on one of the seedlings. “If you plant them, they will come!” exclaimed one of the seed crew members helping with the project. This gratifying moment reinforced that the project was worth the wait to restore one acre of monarch habitat in a landscape dominated by development.
The Milkweed for Monarchs restoration project provides a framework for pollinator enhancement projects across southeastern New Mexico. It highlights the utility of regional and national native seed programs, public outreach, local partnerships and the ability to have proactive conservation measurements in oil and gas field offices. If we keep planting milkweed, the Monarchs will come. An accompanying BLM Weekly article on this project will be released shortly.
