The Mexico State pollinator garden initiative, driven by the Volunteer Corp of the State Tourism Department as part of the Save the Monarch program, is another action intended to conserve the monarch butterfly on its migratory path and areas surrounding its winter habitats.

The initiative aims to foster awareness among civil society, in order to protect the monarch’s migratory phenomenon. For this purpose, the volunteer team, in coordination with the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas (Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas—Conanp), has launched a strategy to create gardens that attract pollinating species in different places and public spaces in Mexico State, as a way to create awareness of monarch butterflies and to be used as monitoring points during their migration.

Plans for 2016 included the construction of three pollinator gardens, with more than 40 volunteers planting more than 6,000 plants. Also, as part of the initiative, plants are given away to children in the municipalities of Aculco, Valle de Bravo and Temascalcingo, for them to build pollinator gardens at their homes.

• Martha Tella (2016), Volunteer Coordinator, Mexico State Department of Tourism.