PAPILLION, Neb. (KMTV) — If he was not the city's parks director, Tony Gowan could work in tourism.
He tells the story so well.
“Well, the name Papillion, of course, in French is the word for butterfly. And when the early settlers came to Papillion, they came across the Papillion creek valley. And upon entering this area, they saw it swarmed with monarch butterflies. And so an exclamation was made Papillion! And it stuck ever since,” said Gowan.
That was in 1870.
Monarchs though, not as prevalent today in nature, are still everywhere here.
Whether they are on banners, businesses, benches, fences, street signs or water towers. Monarchs are at the heart of Papillion's identity.
Papillion has reduced spraying for weeds and maintains native areas to protect milkweed which is the monarch's preferred food source.
Including milkweed, Anne Trumble planted 46 species of plants in a migration station off Highway 370 on her family's farm.
“The monarch endangerment is a very big, systemic problem. It's from generations of losing enormous amounts of habitat, pesticide use, and we don't really know what the impact of climate change is on them,” said Trumble. “And so, we made a family decision to be a little bit more strategic about it and focus on the endangered pollinators.”
One parallel provides hope: the bald eagle.
Once the problem was widely understood, more national agencies worked together to bring it back from near-extinction.
Trumble believes that kind of collaboration is needed now.
“We need corridors, right? Like my little patch. The monarchs still have to get there and have enough to sustain them along the way to get there,” she said.
Endangered, but not gone. Monarchs need help to survive and there's no shortage of that here.
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