Saluting the Monarchs and their champions

I'd posted information in advance of Sunday's annual Monarch butterfly celebration on the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa where activists have been working to preserve the threatened, migratory species - -

and their vital, local habitat under heavy pressure from excavation, building and traffic that has shrunk the wild character of the County Grounds - - a public place.

So we met up there with family, friends and scores of visitors on late summer afternoon, saw up-close prairie restoration work along the Monarch Trail within sight of parking lots, construction cranes, and roads which feed into the traffic machine known as the nearby Zoo Interchange - - and also saw the uplifting restorative payoff by dedicated volunteers, like Barb Agnew - -

- - and appreciated by all.

Props to these good people, their grassroots work and the dividends being left for generations coming up.

Their work is a great example of people paying attention to what's needed in one's backyard that stretches to another's - - just as activists are trying to save a nature preserve near Sheboygan along Lake Michigan from golf course development, the Penokee Hills and its woods and wetlands from open-pit mining and pig-farming, and countless Wisconsin streams, rivers and lakes from encroachment, filling and various forms of state-tolerated pollution.