SOUTHWEST MICHIGAN — Niles Township’s Caryn Adler is known by many as the “butterfly whisperer” and not just because she has a certified wildlife habitat, where the insects can find a haven among the bypasses and bustling residential life.

Adler gathers monarch eggs from her garden and houses the butterflies, helping them to transform in an environment that is free from nature’s perils.

“A monarch whose egg is laid outside has only a 10 percent chance of living to be a butterfly,” she said.

And while watching the butterflies transform from a wriggling yellow and black caterpillar to full grown butterfly could be inspiration enough for wanting to grow them, Adler said she is also concerned about the declining population of the monarch butterfly, capitulated by shrinking habitat space across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

To share the unique life cycle experience with others, Adler brought this year’s butterfly batch to the Niles District Library where she works as an adult services team member. On an average day, people pause to examine the butterfly as it passes through its five life cycles.   

“This year I decided to bring it to the library, because people don’t really get to see it up close,” Adler said. “It has been a huge attraction people stop and say, ‘I have never seen it. I’ve seen the butterfly, but I didn’t know it [goes through] all this.’”

With about 40 butterflies raised so far, Adler is planning to release them into the wild at 1 p.m. today; 3 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 25 and 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 8, at the library, 620 E. Main St.

The monarch is unique not just for its brightly colored wings. The insects also migrate from the northern U.S. and southeast Canada to Mexico – a process that takes several generations of butterfly to complete.

Across Berrien and Cass counties, many residents have taken an interest in protecting and observing the monarch butterfly.

Wendy Jones, a head naturalist for the Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve, is one such person.

Every summer Jones remains vigilant of the skies and gardens, searching for the bright orange and black wings of the monarch butterfly.

She keeps a running tally of the insects and some summers have yielded as little as seven or eight.

This year has been significantly better, with Jones spotting more than 30 monarch butterflies. Still, she said the numbers do not deny the trouble the monarch butterfly faces. Jones said according to research from the Word Wildlife Organization, the monarch’s population was down 27 percent in the winter of 2017, compared to the year before. As a whole, monarch populations are down more than 80 percent in the past 20 years, according to research collected from Jones.

There are a few factors contributing to this decline. Across Canada and the U.S., the milkweed plant — where the monarch lays its eggs is being annihilated.

“It used to be that the common milkweed was along the roadside, it was along the edges of farmer’s fields and that worked pretty well for the butterflies,” Jones said. “But with increased mowing along roadsides and farmers expanding fields as big as they can … we have lost that open habitat so there is nowhere for the caterpillars to feed.”

In the pine shrouded forests of north central Mexico, the monarchs will rest from a more than 1,000-mile-long migration from the northern U.S. and southeast Canada. But deforestation has made it difficult for the butterfly to survive long enough to return to the U.S. and Canada to lay eggs.

Jones said other research has indicated that pesticide usage has also been a contributing factor to a shrinking habitat and thus a shrinking monarch butterfly population.

While monarchs are not necessarily beneficial to the food chain because they ingest poisonous milkweed, and are therefore toxic to predators, they are among the creatures that help to pollinate flowers.

Overall if monarchs disappear, society will lose out on witnessing the wonder of the monarch butterfly and its unique journey, Jones said.

“It would be the loss of this very beautiful [creature] that is fascinating to study, and kids, up to till today, have grown up with monarchs and caterpillars,” Jones said. “I think we are going to lose that if the populations continue to decline. It’s kind of that connection with nature that monarchs provide for people.”

Back at the Niles District Library, Adler said she hopes having the butterflies to observe up close has encouraged a newfound appreciation in locals for the beauty and life of the monarch butterfly. She encouraged people to attend the scheduled releases.

To learn more about monarch butterflies, Fernwood will host a program on the butterflies from 2 to 3 p.m., Sept. 9.