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Allie Schmitt-Morris

The students met in the courtyard on April 21.

On a cool and cloudy day, a group of West students gathered in the courtyard to help save Iowa’s monarch butterflies. Haley Shook ’18 set up a space for the students to make small clay balls with milkweed plants seeds inside them, through a program called “Milkweed Matters.” 

Shook said that the end goal is “to not have monarch butterflies go extinct … [the milkweed allows them] to have food while they’re migrating.” 

The seed balls will either be distributed by the students or donated to RAGBRAI, a bicycle race across Iowa in July. The participants will stop every so often along the race to throw the seeds next to the road.