By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

After five years of raising and releasing monarch butterflies in the Bridgton area, there has been some feedback to indicate that the local population of monarchs is on the rebound.

“People are saying that since we started doing this, they are seeing more monarchs in their yards, at the golf courses,” said Ron Arzilli, the operations manager at Mark’s Lawn and Garden. 

“This is our fifth season of doing this,” he said. “People think that because we are releasing butterflies and those butterflies are flying to Mexico to overwinter and flying back to Maine to reproduce where they started out, there are more monarchs here.”

“We are trying to bring more butterflies to Maine. It seems to be working,” Arzilli said.

Owner Mark Cartonio couldn’t agree more.

“When we started this five years ago, there were almost no monarchs This year, I’ve seen more butterflies than I have in ten years,” he said.

Cartonio was referring to outdoors settings like wild fields and people’s yards. He does landscaping jobs; and it is during those occasions that he has noticed an uptick in the monarch sightings.

“This has been so successful that I am seriously considering doing the same thing at our greenhouse in Georgia, where populations are also declining,” he said.

The fifth annual Monarch Butterfly Festival will be held at Mark’s Lawn and Garden this Sunday starting at 11 a.m. The butterfly release is scheduled for 1 p.m.

The address of Mark’s is 688 Portland Road in Bridgton, and it is easy accessible from Route 302. The event is free and open to the public although a donation of $10 per carload of people is suggested.

People who are interested in having an arts and crafts booth at the event can contact Ron Arzilli, 647-0980. Local artists and crafters can set up a booth for free. There is an open invitation to street performers as well, he said.

“Now that we have the big wedding pavilion out front, it is the perfect place to set up. We will have food. We will have entertainment. Someone will be playing the piano and the guitar under the pavilion,” he said.

The rain date for the event is Sunday, Sept. 22. However, the National Weather Service is forecasting mostly sunny skies and temperatures in the low-70s.

“It looks like the weather is going to cooperate,” Arzillo said.

This year, after the monarch release, the butterfly houses will be resealed and remain open to the public through October, Cartonio said.

“We will continue to keep the butterfly houses open after the release and continue through the Fryeburg Fair,” Cartonio said. 

In a press release, Arzilli explained the concept of a butterfly house.

“The Butterfly Pavilion is a biosphere that sustains the complete monarch butterfly life cycle. We grow a thousand or more butterflies each year to release in September. [Those butterflies] will hopefully migrate to Mexico and perpetuate more monarchs to return to Maine for future generations,” he said.

A visit to the butterfly house is a worthwhile and educational experience, according to people who have posted comments on the Facebook page for Mark’s Lawn and Garden.

“The butterfly garden is a magical experience. I highly recommend it,” a Facebook fan wrote on Aug. 14.

Another Facebook entry from Aug 12 said, “So many beautiful flowers and soooo many butterflies.”

According to Arzilli, more than 1,000 butterflies will be part of Sunday’s release.

Even on Sunday, there will be opportunities to step into the butterfly houses.

“There are beautiful plants, tons of butterflies, caterpillars and chrysalis,” Arzilli said.

There are two types of monarchs that will be involved in the upcoming butterfly release: those that will leave and those that will stay.

There are those butterflies that will stay in Maine for the remainder of their life because they will reproduce and lay eggs.

Then, there are those butterflies that will take the long journey, flying to southwestern Mexico, overwintering there and returning to this region of Maine in the spring. Those migrating monarchs are the third generation of this summer and do not develop to reproduce until next year. 

The monarchs that are going to migrate will soar upward into the sky during the release while the ones that will mate and lay eggs this fall will linger closer to the earth.

“Some of them are not migratory. There is going to be mixture. It will be obvious the migratory ones will fly straight up and the others will hang around in the flowers,” he said.

The butterfly houses have been a learning experience for the business and for the customers.

“Our objective is to increase the population of monarch butterflies in Maine and to provide a fun and educational experience for all ages, and to convey that the monarch butterfly population is dwindling nationwide, and each of us has a responsibility to provide a healthy environment for these beautiful pollinators,” Arzilli said.

“We are teaching people what to grow in their yards so can attract them,” he said. “We sell a wide variety of plants that they need such as the Mexican sunflower, milkweed, Joe-Pye weed” also known as trumpetweed.

“When people leave here they make lists of what they want to plants for their butterfly gardens next year,” he said.

Area residents seem very open to the idea of creating an environment that is friendly to the monarch butterfly. 

“The impressive thing is how much little kids know. They learn about it in kindergarten and first grade and they know more than their parents,” Arzilli said.