ATLANTA — The Georgia Department of Transportation and nonprofit organization The Ray have established monarch butterfly pollinator meadows across nine highway right-of-way sites in Georgia.
The project represents the state transportation department’s first installed acres banked through a voluntary national conservation agreement.
The effort operates under the Nationwide Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances for the Monarch Butterfly on Energy and Transportation Lands, a voluntary initiative that encourages transportation and energy agencies to create, maintain and manage monarch butterfly habitats on public rights-of-way.
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GDOT Commissioner Russell R. McMurry said the goal of the partnership and project was balancing transportation infrastructure with habitat protection.
“Monarch butterfly populations have been declining in recent years and these pollinator sites demonstrate how transportation infrastructure and environmental stewardship can create meaningful conservation opportunities,” McMurry said. “The Ray has long been a valued and trusted partner of the department and we are pleased to continue our collaboration to help protect and preserve monarch butterfly habitats.”
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To create the habitats, GDOT prepared the roadside sites and implemented conservation mowing practices.
GDOT adjusted mowing schedules to allow native vegetation and flowering plants to grow, providing nectar and habitat for monarchs and other pollinators.
The Ray coordinated the planting and evaluation of the meadows, monitoring plant growth, vegetation coverage and pollinator activity across varying roadside conditions.
The project expands on prior testing conducted along a specific corridor.
Josh Weaver, natural capital manager at The Ray, said that the project applies lessons from years of research on The Ray Highway to a broader geographic footprint.
“Installing these meadows across Georgia gave us the opportunity to take what we’ve learned through years of roadside research on The Ray Highway and apply it at a much larger scale,” Weaver said. “Each site presents different soils, slopes and growing conditions, so this work is about more than planting wildflowers.”
Weaver said the project shows how Georgia’s highways can be managed to create monarch butterfly and pollinator habitats while working to understand more of how native vegetation can be used to stabilize land and prevent erosion.
Georgia DOT and The Ray said they will continue monitoring the nine meadow sites as the plantings mature.
Then, information gathered from the project will be used to assess native vegetation for long-term roadside management, slope stabilization and future conservation efforts.
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