Community Profile

Pledge Status

Complete

Pledge Date

Friday, February 19, 2021

Program Year

2021

Achievement

Leadership Circle

2021

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Action Item Report

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City of Eaton Rapids,Michigan

Eaton Rapids, MI

Paul Malewski

Mayor

Pledge Summary

The City of Eaton Rapids is located in central Michigan. We are a "bedroom community" of 5,200 residents. We are known as "The Island City." The downtown is completely surrounded by the Grand River, the longest river in our state and a mecca for wildlife and water enthusiasts. Our school system actively participates in several Earth Day events and every spring performs water husbandry events, which include water quality testing, river clean up, a turtle census and various other aquatic studies. For years the river went under utilized and the investment that our residents made was often tenuous. Today, there is a new awareness to preserve and defend our bountiful natural resources. The Monarch is indeed one of those. Royalty in all of its splendor yet delicate in its presentation. We must be their champion. Stewardship and husbandry and preservation so that they aren't just a picture in a book but a living thing to be experienced and to be held in esteem.

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 developers, planners, landscape architects, and other community leaders and organizers engaged in planning processes to identify opportunities to create monarch habitat.
  • 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.
  • Plant or maintain a monarch and pollinator-friendly demonstration garden at City Hall or another prominent or culturally significant community location.
  • Convert vacant lots to monarch habitat.
  • 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).