Community Profile

Pledge Status

Complete

Pledge Date

Friday, March 19, 2021

Program Year

2021

Achievement

Leadership Circle

2021

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Action Item Report

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City of McAllen

McAllen, TX

Jim Darling

Mayor

Pledge Summary

The City of McAllen is a city in south Texas with a population of roughly 142,000. The city is the largest in Hidalgo County of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, a region known for high biodiversity and as a destination for ecotourism. Mayor Jim Darling of McAllen, Texas has committed to conserving the monarch butterfly and the pollinator community so important to ecosystem and economic health. Mayor Darling looks forward to engaging residents in building more pollinator habitat throughout the city.

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Community Spotlight

Action Items Committed for 2021

Communications and Convening

  • 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.)
  • 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.
  • Create a community art project to enhance and promote monarch and pollinator conservation as well as cultural awareness and recognition.
  • 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.

Program and Demonstration Gardens

  • Host or support a native seed or plant sale, giveaway or swap.
  • Facilitate or support a milkweed seed collection and propagation effort.
  • 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).
  • Initiate or support community science (or citizen science) efforts that help monitor monarch migration and health.