In June 2015, the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) granted $80,000 to the City of St. Louis (City) to promote urban monarch conservation by expanding activities associated with Milkweeds for Monarchs: The St. Louis Butterfly Project (M4M). Generally speaking, the USFWS grant was to: (1) enhance urban education and outreach efforts, and (2) conduct research on urban monarch habitat. The project spent $51,583.57 on activities for ed and $27,785.68 for research. The City’s Office of the Mayor used a portion of the funds to contract a part time individual to act as a Monarch Community Liaison, and used the majority of the grant funds to partner with several local entities with expertise to lead the research and education tasks associated with the USFWS grant work. As will be described more fully below, the City’s grant partners on this urban monarch grant were the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), the Saint Louis Zoo (Zoo) and the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL). The grant period ran from June 2015 to August 2016, and allowed the City to optimize and take advantage of numerous other monarch conservation efforts. The final report summarizes work and findings conducted during the grant performance period, and also references many of the leveraged efforts to advance urban monarch conservation in 2015 and 2016.
