Less than 1% of Missouri’s native prairie remains today. That’s a problem for the endangered Mead’s milkweed, which is the main food source of monarch caterpillars.
“There’s just nothing left,” said Christy Edwards, a conservation geneticist at the Missouri Botanical Garden. “You find these little patchworks of [prairie] fragments scattered across several states, but these fragments are surrounded by housing tracts and cornfields.”
Edwards is one of several St. Louis-based scientists who venture into some of the last remaining prairies in North America to undertake the painstaking work of hand-pollinating Mead’s milkweed. Their work is highlighted in the new short film “Intervention,” which premieres Sunday at the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase…