Some of you may recall that late in 2021 we were considering a name change for Butterfly Ridge Butterfly Conservation Center. Our problem was the word “conservation”. Too many people were reading that word as “conservatory”, “conservative”, and “cabin rental”, as remarkable as that may sound. The human species never ceases to amaze. To dispel confusion, we considered a renaming that would drop “conservation”.

We thought long and hard, even taking a poll among our most loyal fans. The poll ended up as a tie! We simply could not figure a way around this. But as we thought about it, the folks who were reading our sign as “conservatory” and “cabin rental” were not sticking around after realizing the error in their phonics. Which means the folks misreading the sign really were not “our people” anyways. To make a long story short, Butterfly Ridge Butterfly Conservation Center will remain as such. Conservation is what we do, whether people can pronounce it or not. (Scroll down, there is more!)

Most people who know me (this is Chris, Director of BRBCC, by the way) know I am painfully transparent, sometimes to my own misfortune. I am hoping the next couple paragraphs will not be to any misfortune, but here we go!

The last few weeks of 2021 our business number was ringing off the hook with telemarketers, to the point we stopped answering the phone. So, if we have not responded to you, please try again. Your message probably got lost among the hundreds of breast cancer research and police support group calls. Here is the point, Butterfly Ridge does not ask you for money. Only when you walk through our door do we ask for money and I have been told we ask for a horrendously miniscule amount of money, once again probably to our misfortune.

I am going to ask something from you folks, however. While our total visitation last year was our highest ever, our daily visitation was actually down from 2020. We make sure our interns get paid, but neither my wife nor I have gotten a check since all of this started in 2017. While I am not asking for your money, I am asking for your time, about two minutes per day.

Most of you know how social media works. The more likes and shares a post gets, the wider the audience the post goes to. Please like and share our posts so that more people can learn about us. A recent post on Facebook of a stained glass Luna Moth received 103 likes, which was great. Intern Katie is very talented. The next post about our First of Year contest received eleven likes, which was very disappointing. Our business largely relies on word-of-mouth advertising, that is, words from your mouth. Please help us help and inspire others to create habitat for butterflies and other pollinators. Remember, we have nearly quintupled our butterfly population since 2015. I think that is worth talking about!

Finally, Butterfly Ridge is going into the consulting business, specifically for large scale projects. If you are wanting to convert large pieces of land into quality habitat, please invite us to help. Yes, we will charge a fee (remember we do not get tax dollars in any form) but I am confident the management plan we create for you will be well worth it. If you have a smaller project, maybe a residential lot that you want to make more pollinator friendly, let us know. Our former intern Katie Cooley, (Stained-glass Luna girl!) is looking to expand her pollinator garden development business. She is very knowledgeable, creative, and hard-working and would do a superb job in making your yard more pollinator friendly.

Thanks for reading. Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Butterfly Ridge Butterfly CONSERVATION Center!