Teens Protecting Pollinators: Zaagkii Project featured in Sunday northern Michigan paper

(Marquette, Michigan) - The Zaagkii Wings and Seeds Project in Marquette is protecting pollinators like butterflies because billions of honeybees and bumblebees are dying worldwide in syndrome called “Colony Collapse Disorder.”

Marquette teens and Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) youth spent this summer building the first of dozens of white cedar butterfly houses that will be created over the next three years. Lined with bark and slimmer than birdhouses, the shelters offer protection, rest and reproduction safety to Monarchs and other butterflies.

Butterflies are a close second to bees in transferring pollen from one plant to another.

Experts are unsure why bee colonies are collapsing but pesticides, climate change and other man-made reasons are among the suspects. Without pollinators the world food supply will dry up including fruits, vegetables, flowers, other plants and trees.

The Zaagkii Project was founded by the non-profit Cedar Tree Institute (CTI) in Marquette.

“The problem with disappearing pollinators is a cause for concern (because) all life is interconnected,” said Todd Warner, KBIC Natural Resource Director.

Sponsors are KBIC, CTI, Marquette County Juvenile Court and the United States Forest Service (USFS).

“We are seeing a reduction in the number of bumblebees,” said Jan Schultz, Botany and Non-native Invasive Species Program Leader at the USFS eastern region office in Milwaukee.

The Zaagkii Project will plant native plants on the once-barren and polluted Sand Point, a Lake Superior beach that the KBIC is restoring from the effects of old copper mining waste. Marquette teens planted and distributed over 26,000 native plant seeds including at the Hiawatha National Forest greenhouse in Marquette.

The KBIC will use many of the plants at Sand Point Beach that was polluted about 90 years ago with stamp sands from the Mass Mill.


The first tribal Brownfield cleanup site in the Midwest, future plans include a nature tail, restoring a historic lighthouse, swimming, camping, boating, picnic areas and fishing ponds.

The goal is “the propagation of the native species rather than having the exotics come in and destroying what we have established,” said Evelyn Ravindra, KBIC NRD Natural Resources Specialist.

KBIC Summer Youth Program members Ethan Smith,17, and Janelle Paquin,15, and other NativeAmerican teens measured, hammered and painted the butterfly houses.

"We put the bark on the inside for the butterflies to rest on," Smith said.

Marquette teens were given a tour of a bee farm with about 60,000 honeybees.

If all bees disappeared the world food supply would be devastated as “fruits, vegetables, nuts and other commercial crops” vanish, said Beekeeper Jim Hayward of Negaunee Township. “We are all dependent on bees.”

The Marquette teens “went to libraries and studied about the Monarch butterflies and their life cycle and their migration patterns,” said Danny Weymouth, 16.
Restoring indigenous plants is vital to wildlife “so our native species don't get overruled and extinct by predator species,” said Justin Fassbender, 16.

Ensuring the future of native plants is important because “there are a lot of invasive species,” said Devin Dahlstrom, 15.

The public can help protect pollinators by being careful with insecticides, Schultz said.

“Apply the pesticide really early in the morning or at dusk when the pollinators aren’t active,” Schultz said.

The Zaagkii Project contributors include the Marquette Community Foundation, the Negaunee Community Fund, the Negaunee Community Youth Fund, the M.E. Davenport Foundation, the Kaufman Foundation, the Phyllis and Max Reynolds Foundation, theUpper Peninsula Children's Museum in Marquette and the Borealis Seed Company in Big Bay.