Community Profile

Pledge Status

Complete

Pledge Date

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Program Year

2022

Achievement

Leadership Circle

2022

Links and Uploads

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Action Item Report

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City of Evanston

Evanston, IL

Daniel Biss

Mayor

Pledge Summary

The City of Evanston is committed to monarch and pollinator conservation. In 2018 the City of Evanston unanimously approved the City's Climate Action and Resilience Plan (CARP), which called for a number of ambitious measures including the conservation, preservation, and expansion of green space in the City.

Community Spotlight

Action Items Committed for 2022

Communications and Convening

  • 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 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.
  • 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.)

Program and Demonstration Gardens

  • Display educational signage at monarch gardens and pollinator habitat.
  • Launch, expand, or continue an invasive species removal program that will support the re-establishment of native habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
  • 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).
  • 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.

Systems Change

  • Integrate monarch butterfly conservation into the city’s Park Master Plan, Sustainability Plan, Climate Resiliency Plan or other city plans.
  • Change weed or mowing ordinances to allow for native prairie and plant habitats.
  • Launch, expand, or continue one or more ordinances to reduce light pollution to benefit urban wildlife.