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Blue Ash Golf Course joins nationwide effort to help save threatened monarch butterflies

Unknown Image monarch butterfly monarch caterpillar

(July 12, 2021 - Blue Ash)

The Blue Ash Golf Course has joined a nationwide effort to help save threatened monarch butterflies.

In partnership with the USGA and Audubon International, the golf course is now a part of “Monarchs in the Rough,” a project to increase pollinator habitat on golf courses throughout the U.S.

Audubon International moved the golf industry to a leadership position in the efforts to save pollinators in general and, more specifically, the monarch butterfly and its legendary annual migration across North America.

Over 700 golf properties, including the Blue Ash Golf Course, have committed 1,020 acres to creating new plantings of the milkweed plants these butterflies need to survive.

“The Monarch population has declined rapidly,” said Scott Kincaid, Blue Ash Golf Course Superintendent. “I felt we were well suited to do our part to help restore some habitat that would benefit their return. I started a wildflower garden along one of my fence lines at home, and the more I looked into this I realized that even a small area would help.”

There are two areas on the Blue Ash Golf Course that are part of the project: between the 1^st and 18^th hole and behind the 8^th green. You can view the pollinator areas while playing a round of golf.

Monarchs can be seen in the areas daily and are expected to be more prevalent as the “super generation” flies south to Texas and Northern Mexico for the winter, Kincaid said.

Syngenta, Bright View, and the Environmental Defense Fund also sponsor the project.