Pledge Status
Complete
Pledge Date
Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Program Year
2025
Achievement
2025
Links and Uploads
View Links and UploadsAction Item Report
Community Spotlight
Mariposas
Our annual butterfly festival, Mariposas, brings in 300 people to talk with leaders in local conservation organizations about what they can do to support pollinator lifecycles in their own home.
Action Items Committed for 2025
- 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.
- 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 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 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-driven educational conservation strategy, initiative, or practice that focuses on and benefits local, underserved residents.
- Host or support a native seed or plant sale, giveaway or swap.
- Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
- Plant milkweed and pollinator-friendly native nectar plants along roadsides, medians, or public rights-of-way.
- 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.
- Add or maintain native milkweed and nectar-producing plants in gardens in the community.
- Launch, expand, or continue an invasive species removal program that will support the re-establishment of native habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators.
- 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.
- Display educational signage at monarch gardens and pollinator habitat.
- Remove milkweed from the list of noxious plants in city weed / landscaping ordinances (if applicable).
- 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.
- Integrate monarch butterfly conservation into the city’s Park Master Plan, Sustainability Plan, Climate Resiliency Plan or other city plans.
- Reduce or eliminate the use of herbicides, pesticides, or other chemicals that are harmful to monarchs and pollinators and urban wildlife.
- 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 TJ Gilmore | 2025 | 1/8/2025 | Leadership Circle | View Pledge |
| Mayor TJ Gilmore | 2024 | 12/7/2023 | Leadership Circle | View Pledge |
| Mayor TJ Gilmore | 2023 | 1/9/2023 | Leadership Circle | View Pledge |
| Mayor TJ Gilmore | 2022 | 2/28/2022 | Leadership Circle | View Pledge |
| Mayor Rudy Durham | 2021 | 12/30/2020 | Signatories | View Pledge |
