09/03/2026
This year, the Superior Watershed Partnership (SWP) and Great Lakes Climate Corps (GLCC) continued their long-standing partnership with the Hiawatha National Forest to improve pollinator habitat at Peninsula Point on the Stonington Peninsula. The site is one of the most important monarch butterfly migration stopover areas in the Great Lakes, where thousands of monarchs congregate each fall before making their crossing of Lake Michigan.
GLCC crews returned to Peninsula Point this year to help maintain and restore native pollinator habitat, building on restoration work that has taken place there for many years. This partnership has included removing invasive species and establishing native plants, including milkweed, that provide nectar and breeding habitat for monarchs, bees and other pollinators. The SWP and Hiawatha National Forest have planted thousands of native seedlings at targeted habitat openings as part of the ongoing restoration effort.
The work at Peninsula Point is a good example of how the GLCC provides practical, on-the-ground conservation capacity to federal land management partners. By combining Hiawatha National Forest expertise and long-term site stewardship with GLCC crews and SWP resources, important native habitat has steadily improved and expanded at this significant site for monarch conservation.
After crossing Lake Michigan, these monarchs continue south through the Midwest and central United States on one of the longest migrations in the insect world. The eastern monarch population can travel up to 3,000 miles from northern breeding areas to the high-elevation oyamel fir forests of central Mexico, where they spend the winter before beginning the return journey north in the spring. Remarkably, the monarchs that make this fall migration have never made the journey before, yet they navigate thousands of miles to reach the same wintering grounds used by generations before them.
