No Evening Releases Will be Held
Marshfield, WI (OnFocus) Marshfield’s monarch butterfly rescuers are busy preparing for another busy season.
The Gwiazda family expanded their at-home rescue operation by spearheading a new monarch butterfly exhibit at the Wildwood Zoo last summer, raising and releasing 1,583 butterflies by the end of the season.
The family has already begun its efforts for the upcoming summer.
“The monarchs are definitely back! I saw my first one on Sunday,” said Melissa Gwiazda. “My husband and I have since found over 100 monarch eggs and are finding more and more on a daily basis. So we are hoping this means it’ll be another busy year.”
[Related: Monarch Butterfly Rescuers Surpass Goal]
Melissa and husband Jim have also been prepping the butterfly exhibit which was formerly the home to box turtles Millie and Vanillie. The turtles shared the space with the butterflies and moved into the new Welcome Center last fall.
“We’ve been working on the exhibit for a couple of weeks now. We cleaned up things from last year and have been continuously adding flowers and plants,” said Gwiazda. “We also added a small water feature to the exhibit this year that we purchased last fall.”
After being closed since mid-March due to COVID-19, the Wildwood Zoo will reopen to the public on June 1. This season, there will be no public releases of the butterflies in the evenings.
“We will actually be leaving part of the top off the exhibit as to let the butterflies go freely after they hatch when they are ready. There will still be plenty to see!” Gwiazda said. “We will eventually have caterpillars on the milkweed which we are planting and we will still hang all the chrysalises like we did last year. Plus all the flowers themselves will be beautiful to look at.”
The Wildwood Zoo will be open daily from 7:30 a.m.-7:30 p.m.
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Author: News Desk
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