Homes as OPENING SPACES TO OTHER SPECIES Habitats

by Cate Huisman

As more and more of North Idaho has been converted to the meet the needs of modern humans, less and less of it is left to meet the needs of other species. Recognizing that we might one day regret the loss of these others, many local people are working to stem this trend.

Monarch butterflies, the quintessential orange-and-blackwinged subjects of a typical second-grade science class, have a particular affinity for North Idaho. After wintering in California, they spend the spring and early summer traveling here. Why? Because monarchs can lay their eggs only on milkweed, and North Idaho is rife with it.

Or at least, it used to be. Milkweed is poisonous to livestock, so ranchers and farmers have been eradicating it for decades. Local numbers of monarchs have dropped 80 to 90 percent over this time.

So people in Bonner County have been planting milkweed.

The students of John Hastings, a teacher at Sandpoint High School, have been adding to a patch there for several years. “We sell hundreds of milkweeds at All Seasons Garden Center,” he noted of his family’s nursery business in Kootenai. “Lots of people are planting it.”

The more elaborate patches can be certified by Monarch Watch (www.monarchwatch.org), a nonprofit formed to protect and promote monarch butterflies. Gail Bolin, a local landscape designer, has worked with a commercial tree farm in the Selle Valley, Young Living, to create such a waystation on its property, where over 760 milkweeds have been planted.

In south Sandpoint, Preston Andrews and Patty Ericsson are also planting milkweed and other plants that support pollinators—the essential insects that transfer pollen among plants. This has involved a multi-year transformation of their property from its previous human use—as a Christmas tree farm—into a habitat that is instead optimal for bees and bugs.

They started by replacing the dying farmed pines with native shrubs. Then they cleared the innumerable non-native thistles and planted milkweed, goldenrod, kinnikinnick, and yarrow—plants known to attract butterflies, bees, and other important bugs. Last summer they added a variety of more showy and colorful native plants so that something was always in bloom. Thus there is nourishing nectar throughout the growing season.

Their reward is a plethora of pollinators. Ericsson describes “furry and loud” bumblebees so big that she can see the pollen clinging to them as they go about their work. And like the monarch waystations, this garden is now certified too—as a “Pollinator Habitat” by the Xerxes Society, an international organization founded to support invertebrate species, of which bugs are a significant portion.

Rich del Carlo is known throughout Sandpoint as a master of all things bird. On his property in the Selle Valley, del Carlo has installed several nesting boxes to attract and protect different species. Among his favorites are falcons, and three of the boxes are for kestrels, small falcons that migrate yearly from Mexico and the southwest U.S.

He has a front row seat as kestrel family life unfolds in late spring. Del Carlo watches male kestrels bringing food to the nest and has been impressed with the sometimes Herculean efforts of the small birds: Once he saw a kestrel father arrive at a box with a large gopher. “It took every ounce of strength he had to shove that gopher through the hole,” he recalled.

When the baby kestrels leave the nest in late July, del Carlo has to endure a dicey period when the fledgling kestrels can leave the nest but not yet fly back up to it. He watches them struggle as they climb with their feet and beaks back to the nest or another tree, hoping for the best. If all goes well, as soon as they can truly fly, they are gone, eventually to head south with others of their kind.

Not all of us can be milkweed planters and birdbox builders. But a lot of us have lawns. Native-habitat supporters agree that the one thing we can all do to support native species is to keep our lawns as messy as possible. Well-manicured lawns are not what displaced species need; mixed plants (not to say weeds) and the occasional pile of cuttings are much more appealing.

It’s something to think about next time we’re trying to decide whether to spend a sunny day mowing the grass or relaxing by the lake.