Queens College receives EPA grant to promote education on monarch butterflies in NYC

New York City’s Queens College recently won an environmental education grant worth $91,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support its Metropolitan Monarch Alliance Project, which seeks to protect migratory monarch butterflies when they are in the city.

Using the EPA’s funding, Queens College will further its program with educational workshops for 150 elementary school teachers and 100 community members. Through these workshops, the university hopes to establish five way stations — or areas containing nectar-rich plants like milkweed, where the butterflies can lay eggs and find nutrition — at environmental education centers in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. The funding will also go toward assisting 25 teachers in establishing way stations at their schools, allowing students to study and care for the butterflies.

“This innovative project will educate people of all ages about an important spring and summer visitor to New York City — monarch butterflies,” EPA Regional Administrator Judith A. Enck said. “As beautiful as they are, monarchs are also vulnerable to climate change and other environmental risks and the Queens College project will teach New Yorkers why they are important and how to help protect them.”

Queens College was one of three environmental education grant recipients from EPA Region 2, which saw a total of $273,000 in this round of grants.