Date: 01/01/2009

Number: 1

Paul Cherubini
The Shipley Nature Center is located in the city of Huntington Beach, Calif. and within a city park called Central Park. only very small numbers of monarchs clustered at Central Park this past fall and the clusters do not persist through the winter so the site is not considered a true overwintering site, just an autumnal cluster site.

In the early 90's and earlier decades several thousand monarchs could routinely be seen at some Los Angeles area cluster sites like Central Park, but since then numbers have declined dramatically, especially since 1999.

Unlike the overwintering sites in Mexico which have suffered only a minor population decline since the 70's and 80's the California sites have declined by a whopping 80%. And many sites which, back around 1990 the California taxpayers spent two million + dollars to protect are now unoccupied by monarchs or are only marginally occupied.

Juana Mueller
We are educating the public about our Western Monarch population and have a certified Monarch Waystation at our Center. We do not have overwintering Monarchs, that is to say, the ones that cluster on trees. The areas in Huntington Beach that once did have over wintering Monarchs have not had them in about 4 years. These spots were in our Central Park Eucalyptus trees and at the Norma Gibbs butterfly park in the north part of our city.

We, at Shipley Nature Center, do have a lovely show of Monarchs when they come in early summer to feed on our Narrowleaf Milkweed plants, lay eggs, and accomplish the life cycle of caterpillar and chrysalis.

Huntington Beach, CA

Latitude: 33.7 Longitude: -118

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