Journal archives for January 2021

January 31, 2021

Zoom talk on Project Swallowtail

If you are looking for something butterfly-related, this video of a recent Toronto Entomologists' Association meeting may be of interest:

PROJECT SWALLOWTAIL
Clement Kent, York University
Many people understand that rewilding urban areas with native plants that are hosts to native insects is essential. However, there's a big need to scale up local efforts to the urban scale. After leading several small to medium sized Pollinator Garden and Pollinator Corridor projects, the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale & Toronto turned to like-minded people at Pollinator Partnership Canada, World Wildlife Fund Canada, David Suzuki Foundation, the City of Toronto, North American Native Plants Society, and several others. We formed a collaboration called Project Swallowtail. We found funding, got native plants raised from local seed sources without pesticides, and enrolled 350 volunteers in a 24 square km part of downtown west Toronto. Some unique aspects of Project Swallowtail include the grassroots, bottom-up, collaborative organization and the direct focus on ecological science. This talk presents the first year of our project. Looking forward, our efforts continue and we want to explore how to collaborate with expert naturalists like TEA to measure whether we are succeeding.

https://www.ontarioinsects.org/ProjectSwallowtail.mp4

Separately, here is a blog post by Clement that provides interesting background on some of the plants favoured by the swallowtails in southern Ontario:
Hops and Spice, Pipes and Paws: How Large a Tale will you Swallow?

Posted on January 31, 2021 05:05 PM by dkaposi dkaposi | 2 comments | Leave a comment