Founded in 1981, the Mountains Restoration Trust (MRT) owns and manages approximately 2,000 acres of land in the Santa Monica Mountains as a means to preserve, protect and restore the unique mountain habitat and its resources. Recently, the MRT has begun a new focus on monitoring to measure the success of their restorations. Through their new partnership with the Monarch Joint Venture, MRT hopes to use pollinator monitoring to capture the biological diversity of MRT’s land, and to build a foundation for long term monarch and pollinator conservation in the Santa Monica Mountains.
MRT’s habitat restoration projects are not specifically focused on monarchs, but have benefits to many local species, including monarchs. In addition to working on restoring breeding habitat for monarchs, they are also investing in restoring overwintering sites previously damaged by wildfires in Southern California.
With both breeding and overwintering monarchs on their lands, MRT has an important opportunity to conserve habitat for western monarchs throughout their entire annual cycle. They are expanding their monarch conservation goals using current and new connections. These goals include developing or adopting specific monitoring guidelines and performance standards for habitat restoration projects based on pollinator abundance and diversity. The MRT also plans to educate local homeowners, schools, and volunteers about monarch conservation. Similarly, MRT is helping to bridge the gap between private and public landowners to create land-use plans that benefit pollinators.
The MRT is a great addition to the MJV and we are excited to start working together to ensure the Santa Monica Mountains support high quality habitat and provide valuable information for monarchs and other pollinators!
Cold Creek Preserve, MRT’s primary natural preserve and a great habitat and location for monarch population support.
The Monarch Joint Venture is a national partnership of federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, businesses and academic programs working together to conserve the monarch butterfly migration. The content in this article does not necessarily reflect the positions of all Monarch Joint Venture partners. Header photo by Candy Sarikonda. Cold Creek Preserve photo provided by Mountains Restoration Trust.