A pair of Pella High School’s talented and gifted students have been working on a project to better understand the migration patterns of an important and beautiful critter.

Senior Jack Sytsma and Freshman Kaylin Vos helped plant a milkweed garden at Pella High as a Monarch butterfly waystation.

“Our mission is to research which species the Monarchs like best,” Vos says.

Both say the project encourages Monarch butterflies to pass through during their primary migration seasons.

“The project is based on the declining number of Monarchs in our ecosystem,” she tells KNIA/KRLS. “To keep them from going extinct, projects like this have sprung up over the nation trying to research what we can do to best prevent this extinction.”

“We used 18 different species of nectar plants and nine species of milkweed also, and it’s just a lot of colors and butterflies like varying colors and varying plants for them to get their nectar from,” Sytsma says.

They will do research about the butterflies on a weekly basis this summer to track their patterns and how they respond to different types of milkweed. The students in Pella High’s talented and gifted program partnered with Central College and Iowa State University to be added to the national Monarch Waystation program.