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A pollinator garden will be planted at Solana Beach City Hall in an effort to support the local monarch butterfly population, following a May 7 vote by the City Council.
The garden will cost an estimated $10,000, which includes $3,000 raised by the local SeaWeeders gardening club and $7,000 from the city’s Climate Action Plan Implementation budget.
“This is part of the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge,” Solana Beach City Council member Jewel Edson said. “I just think it’s something to celebrate.”
The Mayors’ Monarch Pledge is an initiative by the National Wildlife Federation to enlist local government leaders who want to help the monarch butterfly population, which has been decimated in recent years.
There were a little more than 9,000 monarch butterflies tallied in an annual winter count, according to the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, down from about 200,000 in each of the last three years.
The pledge requires at least three actions per year by each signatories. For the 2025 pledge, signatories include local governments across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Del Mar, Encinitas, Oceanside, Escondido and San Diego have taken the pledge in the past, but Solana Beach is the only remaining city in the county still actively doing it.
“Monarch butterflies, as well as other butterfly species, bees, birds and bats, help move pollen from one plant to another, fertilizing flowers and making it possible for plants to produce food needed to feed people and wildlife,” according to a Solana Beach city staff report. “More than a third of the food that we eat requires pollinators to grow. Yet many of these pollinators are declining in number, with habitat loss, pesticides and climate change all contributing to this decline. By signing the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge, our municipality has committed to create habitat for the monarch butterfly and pollinators.”
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