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Riverview’s ‘butterfly messiah’ is planting gardens to help save the monarchs

The butterflies might be added to the endangered species list


Gloria Cannon holds a Monarch butterfly caterpillar at her home in Riverview. [LUIS SANTANA Times]

By Paul Guzzo
September 28, 2020

RIVERVIEW — Gloria Cannon’s Riverview property isn’t zoned for a hotel, airport or nursery, yet she operates miniature versions of each in her backyard.

Neighbors don’t mind.

They are for monarch butterflies, after all, and who doesn’t enjoy seeing the orange winged insects fluttering about, Cannon said.

It’s part of her effort to help save the monarchs.

The United States Fish & Wildlife Service is reviewing whether the butterflies should be classified as endangered species. Its website says the decision will be announced by the end of this year.

“We need the monarch butterflies,” Cannon said. “They are incredibly important pollinators.”


Monarch Butterfly caterpillars are seen eating milkweed at Gloria Cannon's Monarch Butterfly Waystation at her home in Riverview. [LUIS SANTANA Times]

Cannon is doing her part by tending to two monarch butterfly gardens in her backyard and inspiring others to follow her lead.

Such gardens are made by planting milkweed, the wildflowers on which monarchs will lay eggs and the only food their caterpillars will eat.

Pesticides and overdevelopment are destroying milkweed, according to the Fish & Wildlife Service website, and the monarch population will continue to dwindle without a supply.

“Their numbers are down 90 percent of what they were in 1992,” the Minneapolis-based Save Our Monarchs nonprofit reports on their website. “And the milkweed plant population, which is indispensable to the monarch, is also down 90 percent.”

Neither of Cannon’s milkweed gardens take up much room, she said. Between them, she planted about four dozen milkweed plants.

That was enough for her backyard to be named an official monarch waystation by Monarch Watch, a University of Kansas-based conservation and research nonprofit.

“Monarchs travel as far north Maine,” Cannon said. “And then around this time of year, they start migrating south for the winter, as far south as Mexico.”

The gardens provide the travelers a place to rest and lay their eggs along the way.


Monarch Butterfly caterpillars are seen eating milkweed at Gloria Cannon's Monarch Butterfly Waystation at her home in Riverview. [LUIS SANTANA Times]

Within a month, the metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly is complete.

“And then they fly off into the world,” Cannon said. “This is all pretty easy. My whole mission behind what I call the Tampa Bay Monarch Project is to just encourage people to plant milkweed. Nature will do the rest.”

The inspiration for this project comes from the Riverview Montessori School, where Cannon has been a kindergarten reading teacher for three years.

The school’s principal and CEO, Rohini Rustogi, has been planting milkweed gardens on that campus and others in Apollo Beach and Brandon for more than a dozen years.

“The children love it because they can see the lifecycle of the butterflies, which are beautiful,” said Rustogi, who then quoted Robert A. Heinlein’s 1985 science fiction novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. “Butterflies are not insects. They are self-propelled flowers.”

Still, Rustogi added, “Gloria gives me too much credit. She is the one who has expanded it” by encouraging others to plant gardens.

In a Facebook post promoting Cannon’s work, the school calls her the “butterfly messiah.”


Monarch butterfly caterpillars are seen eating milkweed at Gloria Cannon's Monarch Butterfly Waystation at her home in Riverview. [LUIS SANTANA Times]

Due to her efforts, Cannon said, several friends and student parents have planted milkweed gardens, as has Seffner’s Impact Academy.

“It becomes an addiction,” Cannon said. “Once you have one, you love relaxing outside with it and you always get excited when you have a visiting butterfly.”

She sees the impact the monarch gardens can have on children through her own kids.

Her 4-year-old daughter, Cecelia, enjoys searching the milkweed for new caterpillars.

And though her 6-year-old son, Noah, prefers watching Pokémon on television, Cannon said, he too understands the important role monarchs have on the ecosystem.

Cecelia was recently singing the children’s song I’m Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee, Cannon said, and upon hearing the line, “I’m squishing up the baby bumble bee,” Noah replied, “Why would you want to squish a bee? Don’t squish bees or butterflies. We need them to pollinate.”

https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/bright-spots/2020/09/28/riverviews-butterfly-messiah-is-planting-gardens-to-help-save-the-monarchs/