Protecting milkweed to preserve monarchs

By Jenna Stanek

Makenzie Quintana, a student in the Environmental Protection and Compliance Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, provides a perch for a monarch butterfly raised from an egg that was found on lab property.

If you grew up in New Mexico, you probably remember a time when lots of monarch butterflies wafted through the air in late summer and early fall. These days, they’re a relatively rare sight. Sadly, monarch butterfly populations are under severe stress. They have declined by 85% in the past two decades, prompting the monarch to be considered for protection under the Endangered…