HomeProduct Complimentary download Monsanto announces multi-year commitment to help monarch butterflies

Monsanto announces multi-year commitment to help monarch butterflies

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Publish time: 31st March, 2015      Source: St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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Monsanto announces multi-year commitment to help monarch butterfliesMonsanto announces multi-year commitment to help monarch butterflies" title="Share this link on Facebook">St. Louis, Missouri, USAMarch 31, 2015Monsanto Company announced today a $400,000 commitment to partner with and support the efforts of experts working to benefit monarch butterflies. This comes in addition to the company’s earlier announcement of a $3.6 million grant to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF). Monsanto’s funding is part of the company’s ongoing commitment to work with experts in support of important biodiversity initiatives.“Monsanto is committed to preserving and protecting the biodiversity of our planet. While weed management has been a factor in the decline of milkweed habitat, the agricultural sector can absolutely be part of the solution in restoring it,” said Brett Begemann, president and chief operating officer of Monsanto. “We’re proud to collaborate with non-profits, universities, researchers, farmers and others to find ways to improve and protect monarch habitat across North America. It is clear that sufficient progress cannot be made without action. Monsanto will work alongside others to address this important element of biodiversity.”Monsanto grants to the following organizations will support a series of initiatives focused on both immediate and long-term action in protecting biodiversity:National Fish and Wildlife Foundation: Monsanto will match the initial $1.2 million pledge from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund and provide $2.4 million additional funding to match commitments from federal agencies over the next three years. This support will be targeted to provide habitat restoration, education and outreach and milkweed seed and plant production.Monarch Watch: A nonprofit education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas – focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. This grant will enable Monarch Watch to produce and make available milkweed plants free of charge for landscape improvement, including buffer strips on farm-lands, roadsides, rights of way, parks, public lands and demonstration plots along the monarch’s migratory path – which stretches from Mexico to Canada.Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium: The grant will help drive research to create quality habitat, develop guidance and demonstrations for farmers to cost-effectively improve and expand habitat, and monitor milkweed and adult monarch populations to track progress. The Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium can serve as a model framework for other state-level initiatives planning to implement monarch conservation.Pheasants Forever: The grant will lead to the planting of monarch and pollinator habitats at more than 70 Monsanto research and manufacturing sites and facilities located in the monarch breeding range. This includes the creation of three Learning Center programs to demonstrate how to establish sustainable monarch and pollinator habitat, which is also the same habitat critical to upland birds. These programs engage, enroll and educate farmers and communities to contribute to a resilient monarch population.University of Guelph: The grant will help to understand migration patterns and identify priority areas for milkweed restoration in the United States and Canada so that investments in habitat improvement are more successful.University of Illinois at Chicago, Energy Resources Center: Researchers will use these resources to identify and prioritize available public and private lands for monarch habitat improvement using geo-spatial analysis. This information will support the success of restoration programs by considering habitat location, quality and cost across diverse landscapes.Beyond those funding commitments, Monsanto also encourages a diverse group of public and private sector stakeholders to fully participate in the Keystone Policy Center Monarch Butterfly Collaborative – an effort to connect the agriculture supply chain with conservationists, farmers, scientists and landscape professionals from across the country to coordinate and scale solutions to the challenges facing monarchs and other pollinators.As a result of the commitments, Monsanto will participate in:Supporting expansion and improvement of more than 10 million acres of quality, distributed habitat by 2025Funding additional efforts in 2015 and thereafter by conservation groups to further restore sustainable quality milkweed/pollinator habitat across the critical range for monarch breeding and migrationProviding 100,000 milkweed plants for planting into priority landscapes where quality habitat is neededDeveloping and adopting Best Management Practices (BMPs) for quality habitat installation and landscape improvementReaching 100,000 growers with guidance and BMPs for creating and protecting monarch habitatImplementing web-based monitoring and reporting tools to track and measure progress annuallyAnnually quantifying progress and prioritizing on-going milkweed habitat restoration effortsDeveloping a county-level scoring system to prioritize habitat restoration by 2016Organizing a rights-of-way workshop to drive progress in this opportunity areaLeveraging the capabilities of the company’s scientists and applying advanced technologies in seed treatments, seed manufacturing, distribution, and data science to advance knowledge and improve the capacity and speed of delivery of habitat restoration programsAnnually reporting on Monsanto’s progress toward the delivery of improved habitat restoration technologiesBuilding and helping to fund a broad public-private partnership to restore monarch/pollinator habitat on public and private lands in overwintering sites and throughout the monarch breeding rangeTo learn more about Monsanto’s work to protect and conserve natural resources, go to http://monsanto.info/sustainability. More news from: Monsanto CompanyWebsite: http://www.cnchemicals.com/: March 31, 2015The news item on this page is copyright by the organization where it originatedFair use notice