Imagine a crime drama shot in Phoenix: The hard-boiled detective is meeting with a forensic firearms expert at the Phoenix crime lab to discuss a grisly murder. It’s a comfortable autumn day, so they agree to meet in the plaza outside the lab. The firearms specialist goes to open a forensic report on her laptop, but she can’t.
A monarch butterfly is perched on her keyboard.
To be realistic, any good crime drama shot in Phoenix would probably need some kind of butterfly moment like this one. That’s because, as of September 2024, the garden between the Phoenix Police Department headquarters and the crime lab has been designated as a “waystation” for monarchs — part of a larger effort by Phoenix to save the insects from extinction.
Phoenix is home to 74 registered monarch waystations, gardens and parks where people have planted milkweed and other pollinator-friendly flowers that the monarchs can use as places to lay their eggs or rest during their long migration from Mexico to coastal California. The garden at the crime lab is one of six waystations planted on land owned by the city.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego helps volunteers plant a pollinator garden outside the Phoenix Crime Lab in September 2024.
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has dedicated the city to supporting monarchs, signing the Mayor’s Monarch Pledge five years in a row since 2021, but the garden at the crime lab was not a top-down directive. The idea was planted when Erin Hickson, a forensic scientist in the crime lab’s firearms section, attended a water conservation class through the city. When she’s not examining possible murder weapons at her day job, Hickson is a hobbyist gardener. She wondered if the large cement planters outside the crime lab could use a green-up.
“Out here in (the crime lab’s) garden, it’s always been just dirt. Sometimes they would plant things, but they would always die fairly quickly,” Hickson said.
Hickson called up Tricia Balluff, an environmental program manager for the city, who proposed a butterfly garden. But before it could become a government garden, the plan had to navigate the machinery of government.
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Garden requires a lot of attention
The pair worked for two years applying for federal grants, gaining approvals. Finally, they gathered 50 volunteers and, on a September day in 2024, brought the plan to life. The group planted 400 plants, including desert milkweed, Arizona milkweed, Gregg’s mistflower, globe mallow and many more flowering species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service paid for the plants, provided by the Desert Botanical Garden, and the city committed to maintaining the plaza as a pollinator garden for at least 10 years.
“When I set my goals, I set them high, but then we worked together for two years and got it done,” Hickson said.
Still, Hickson’s work is hardly done. She and Balluff selected hardy desert plants, but even those species can struggle with Phoenix’s summer heat. During a tour on July 2, the milkweeds drooped a bit and showed some yellow. Even at 8:30 a.m., the temperature was already pushing 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I walk out there every week and panic when a plant’s looking sad,” Hickson said.
On that same day, Hickson was using her personal pickup truck to deliver two yards of mulch for the garden (the mulch was donated for free by Phoenix-based lawn care product vendor GRO-WELL, but Hickson needed to get it to the site). Hickson hopes the mulch will help lock in moisture during hot summers. Balluff added that the flowering plants and milkweeds will endure the summers better once the recently planted saplings grow into shade-giving trees.
Those trees could live long past the city’s official commitment to maintain the area as a pollinator garden. To keep the garden running, Hickson said she may also need to find someone else at the crime lab as passionate about the garden as she is.
“It shows the power of, like, one passionate person in an organization, and what a difference they can make,” Balluff said.
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Monarch butterflies fight for survival
That’s all the better for the monarchs, whose fate hangs by an ever-thinning thread, according to scientists. The western monarch population — the group that migrates through Arizona — has declined by 95% since the 1980s and faces a 99% chance of extinction by 2080, according to data cited by FWS.
Biologists believe habitat destruction, insecticides, and the effects of climate change are responsible for the butterfly’s decline. In particular, herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup and the spread of agriculture have reduced populations of milkweed plants, the only food source for monarch caterpillars.
The Fish and Wildlife Service published its proposal to list the iconic insect as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in December. The proposal is one step in a multi-year process to ensure some of the strongest protections a species can receive in the United States.
Monarch butterflies can be found in Arizona year-round, though not in the same location. Monarchs typically spend October through April in low deserts and escape the summer heat to higher elevations for the rest of the year. While some monarchs spend the whole year in Arizona, the state also serves as a migration gateway for butterflies from North America’s two major migratory monarch populations — the so-called “western” and “eastern” populations, which winter in California and Mexico, respectively.
Phoenix, which reports having planted over 5,000 native pollinator-supporting plants over 4.7 acres, is one of many central Arizona entities with efforts to help the butterfly. Local Arizona organizations like the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and the Arizona Monarch Collaborative have completed dozens of projects promoting monarch habitat in the state. The collaborative serves as an umbrella organization coordinating monarch conservation by more than 80 governments, nonprofits and tribes in Arizona. Mesa Mayor Mark Freeman also joined Mayors’ Monarch Pledge in March.
Balluff said even regular Phoenicians with limited outdoor space can contribute to supporting the butterflies by putting out potted plants that support them.
“What really makes a difference for monarchs is people putting patches out on their properties, creating a web of habitat resources. Even potted milkweed on a balcony even creates a resting place,” Balluff said.
Austin Corona covers environmental issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Send tips or questions to austin.corona@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental coverage on azcentral.com and in The Arizona Republic is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Monarch butterflies gain new habitat at the Phoenix Police Department