Native Americans in Oklahoma join forces to help monarch butterflies

Seven Native American tribes in Oklahoma will provide habitat and food on their lands for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have plummeted in recent years due to troubles along their lengthy migration route.

Tribal leaders said at a news conference on Tuesday in Shawnee, southeast of Oklahoma City, they will plant crucial vegetation for the butterflies, including milkweed and native nectar-producing plants, on their lands.

"For the last several years, we have been raising bees and pollinators, so when his opportunity came along, it fit with what we were doing," Thalia Miller, director of the Chickasaw Nation Horticulture Department, told reporters.

The tribes will work with the University of Kansas’ Monarch Watch program and the Euchee Butterfly Farm in Bixby, Oklahoma. The project is supported by a grant of about $250,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/us-butterflies-monarchs-oklahoma-idUSKCN0Y12R1