Kent ISD — Caledonia senior Gabbi Levack smiled as she held her hand as still as she could, waiting for the monarch butterfly perched on her finger to take flight.
Just a few minutes prior, Gabbi and her classmates in the Kent Career Tech Center agriscience program had released the butterflies as part of a conservation program through John Ball Zoo.
“It’s really cool to be part of this event as it is memorable,” said Gabbi, who used to enjoy watching butterflies with her grandmother.
The butterfly program fits with the Tech Center’s agriscience goals in teaching about natural resources, conservation and ecology, said instructor Heather Pratt.
“We hope that students have a better understanding of the environment,” Pratt said. “Seeing something as seemingly as small as a butterfly has an impact on our environment and (we hope) that the students understand how, by not having butterflies, it could change the ecosystem.
“We need to be careful with our resources because they could face the day that there are no butterflies.”
Pratt said her students enjoy being involved in projects like the Michigan Butterfly Network, a pollinator conservation program seeking to understand how native butterfly populations are changing over time. The butterfly program is one of several conservation programs offered by John Ball Zoo that schools and community members can participate in.
Last year, the students helped to build the Tech Center’s butterfly hoop house, located in the arboretum next to the school, and plant milkweed for the butterflies there.
For the release this fall, each butterfly was tagged with a small sticker on the underside of its wing. Each sticker has a number on it, so butterfly monitors can enter the number into monarchwatch.org and help record the butterfly’s travel as the monarchs are spotted, said Lauren Hirschfield, a seasonal conservation tech for John Ball Zoo.
Hirschfield placed each butterfly into a corresponding envelope with its number. After a countdown, students turned their envelopes upside down, allowing the butterfly to climb out and fly away.
The agriscience students will now periodically check their butterflies’ progress on the Monarch Watch website.
“It was very neat to watch the butterflies take off,” said Grandville junior Zoe Teunissen. “You felt like you were part of something bigger, which makes you smile.”
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