Pledge Status
Complete
Pledge Date
Monday, December 18, 2023
Program Year
2024
Achievement
2024
Links and Uploads
View Links and UploadsAction Item Report
Community Spotlight
Minnetonka's Polli-Neighbor Pledge
The Polli-Neighbor Pledge is promoted during Minnetonka's annual Monarch & Pollinator Awareness Month, to help residents learn how they can take action to help pollinators in our community
Minnetonka's Polli-Neighbor Pledge - Spanish
Our pledge is also available to Spanish-speaking residents.
Action Items Committed for 2024
- Issue a proclamation to raise awareness about the decline of the monarch butterfly and the species’ need for habitat. This proclamation must incorporate a focus on monarch conservation.
- Create a community art project to enhance and promote monarch and pollinator conservation as well as cultural awareness and recognition.
- Create a community-driven educational conservation strategy, initiative, or practice that focuses on and benefits local, underserved residents.
- Engage with developers, planners, landscape architects, and other community leaders and organizers engaged in planning processes to identify opportunities to create monarch habitat.
- Engage with Homeowners Associations (HOAs), Community Associations or neighborhood organizations to identify opportunities to plant monarch gardens and revise maintenance and mowing programs.
- Engage with gardening leaders and partners (e.g., Master Naturalists, Master Gardeners, Nature Centers, Native Plant Society Chapters , other long-standing and influential community leaders) to support monarch butterfly conservation.
- Engage with city parks and recreation, public works, sustainability, and other relevant staff to identify opportunities to revise and maintain mowing programs and milkweed / native nectar plant planting programs.
- Engage with community garden groups and urge them to plant native milkweeds and nectar-producing plants.
- Launch or maintain a public communication effort to encourage residents to plant monarch gardens at their homes or in their neighborhoods. (If you have community members who speak a language other than English, we encourage you to also communicate in that language; Champion Pledges must communicate in that language.)
- Display educational signage at monarch gardens and pollinator habitat.
- Host or support a monarch butterfly festival that is accessible to all residents in the community and promotes monarch and pollinator conservation, as well as cultural awareness and recognition.
- Launch, expand, or continue an invasive species removal program that will support the re-establishment of native habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
- Add or maintain native milkweed and nectar-producing plants in gardens in the community.
- Initiate or support community science (or citizen science) efforts that help monitor monarch migration and health.
- Host or support a monarch neighborhood challenge to engage neighborhoods and homeowners' associations within the community to increase awareness, support community unity around a common mission, and/or create habitat for the monarch butterfly.
- Earn or maintain recognition for being a wildlife-friendly city by participating in other wildlife and habitat conservation efforts (i.e., National Wildlife Federation’s Community Wildlife Habitat program).
- Launch or maintain an outdoor education program(s) (e.g., at schools, after-school programs, community centers and groups) that builds awareness and creates habitat by engaging students, educators, and the community in planting native milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants (i.e., National Wildlife Federation’s Schoolyard Habitats program and Monarch Mission curriculum).
- Plant milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants along roadsides, medians, or public rights-of-way.
- Convert vacant lots to monarch habitat.
- Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
- Facilitate or support a milkweed seed collection and propagation effort.
- Host or support a native seed or plant sale, giveaway or swap.
- Reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals that are harmful to monarchs and pollinators and urban wildlife.
- Integrate monarch butterfly conservation into the city’s Park Master Plan, Sustainability Plan, Climate Resiliency Plan or other city plans.
- Launch, expand, or continue an effort to change municipal planting ordinances and practices to include more native milkweed and native nectar producing plants at city properties.
- Increase the percentage of native plants, shrubs and trees that must be used in city landscaping ordinances and encourage use of milkweed, where appropriate.
- Change weed or mowing ordinances to allow for native prairie and plant habitats.
- Remove milkweed from the list of noxious plants in city weed / landscaping ordinances (if applicable).
- Launch, expand, or continue one or more ordinances to reduce light pollution to benefit urban wildlife.
Past Pledge Archive
| Mayor Name | Program Year | Pledge Date | Achievement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mayor Brad Wiersum | 2024 | 12/18/2023 | Monarch Champions | View Pledge |
| Mayor Brad Wiersum | 2023 | 12/12/2022 | Monarch Champions | View Pledge |
| Mayor Brad Wiersum | 2022 | 1/10/2022 | Monarch Champions | View Pledge |
| Mayor Brad Wiersum | 2021 | 12/21/2020 | Leadership Circle | View Pledge |
