What is Butterfly Ridge?

We think of ourselves as wearing a variety of hats. We are a demonstration site. One of our objectives that we share with visitors is our desire for our visitors to steal our ideas for land management and garden plant selection. Then take those ideas home and make their own butterflies.

A different hat is a desire to help our visitors, especially children, to enjoy being out in nature. Too many children today view nature as something observed through a screen, or a scary place, rather than being a direct participant. We want to give children, and adults, a safe place to explore and learn. We offer our visiting families, and sometimes adults without children, scavenger hunt games to play while out on the trail, to encourage observation.

While we are a demonstration site, we are also a conservation site. We plant the plants, and create the habitats, that pollinators and other wildlife need to thrive. Our Common Wood Nymph population has exploded because of the tall grasses we have planted in our prairie. Our cloudywing population has exploded because of the bush clovers we have planted (a plant that most people would consider not especially showy). We have a very healthy, and necessary, black snake population because of the large mulch pile we maintain on the property, mulch that we use to make our trails nice.

Butterfly Ridge is data collection. We keep meticulous records regarding butterfly and moth sightings. Nothing at Butterfly Ridge is anecdotal. We have data to back up everything we say. As example, this has been a terrible year for Tiger Swallowtails. According to our data, since we started collecting data in 2015, this year is our third worst for Tigers. And because of all of the data we keep, we can now proceed with trying to figure out why! We also share this data with various interested parties. We contribute extensively to iNaturalist and different Facebook nature-themed sites.

Butterfly Ridge is outreach. We do a lot of programs off-site, teaching people our land management and plant selection criteria. Sometimes we get paid for this off-site programming, sometimes we don’t. We provide native plant seed free of charge to help people get started with developing their own native plant pollinator gardens. Sometimes folks make a donation in return for the seed, sometimes they don’t.

Butterfly Ridge is training the future. We hire interns every summer and introduce them to topics and experiences for which there is no college course. Many of our interns, upon their arrival, have little knowledge of butterflies, moths, invasive plants, construction, etc. By the end of the summer they can identify most of the butterflies along the trail, many of the moths on our Mothing Zone sheets, build a boardwalk, and have the confidence to share all of this with our visitors. We are very proud of the strides our interns make over their 8-12 weeks with us.

We are accomodating. Yes, we are an outdoor experience and yes we are located in Hocking County, Ohio. There is no such thing as flat land in Hocking County. Therefore, we offer trail tours in our four-seat John Deere Gator to folks with physical limitations. The gator is not always available, but most days it is and our staff is happy to give these tours, at no extra charge.

What Butterfly Ridge is not.

We are not a butterfly conservatory. Clouds of butterflies will not descend upon you at Butterfly Ridge, and if that is your expectation, then you should probably not visit us. We do not FedEx in butterflies. Our motto is “if you plant it, they will come”. And they have. Since 2020, our butterfly population has been consistently four to five times larger than it was in 2015. However, with that said, our butterflies are subjected to the same environmental conditions as any other butterflies that live in the outdoors. Our Tiger Swallowtails have plenty of host plants and available nectar, and still the population has tanked this year. Why? We don’t know.

We are not an Ohio State Park. I would argue our trails are nicer! Since we are not a state park, we do not receive a penny of tax money. We operate based entirely on your admission fees and gift shop sales. We have very intentionally kept our admission fees modest, since most of our competition is free. Try going to another private educational attraction in Ohio for $6 per person! The other day we had a person complain that our gift shop/visitor center was sales focused. Really?! It’s a gift shop. And those sales pay our interns, buy mulch, replace signs, repair gators, fuel tractors, etc. What those sales do not do is pay the owners a handsome salary. The owners actually get paid less than the interns.

Hopefully you now better understand what we are. Yes, we are about butterflies (and moths, and bees, and hummingbirds, and . . . ). We are not about simply displaying butterflies; we go way, way deeper than that. We encourage you to join with us in this adventure through taking our seeds, participating in our activities, supporting us on social media, and yes, buying our stuff. If you would rather not, then the state park is only a couple miles down the road!