OKLAHOMA CITY — Chip Taylor never expected to become a landscape ecologist.

But as he watched monarch butterflies on a downward spiral — as a powerful herbicide killed off the only plant that feeds their caterpillar — he realized that he needed to find places to grow milkweed in order to save the orange-and-black butterfly.

Twenty years ago, a billion monarchs flittered through the skies. Their population plunged a staggering 95 percent by the end of last year, when about 56 million remained.

Recently, Taylor, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Kansas, was awarded a $527,154 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to work with four Oklahoma tribes — the Osage, Miami, Chickasaw and Choctaw — to restore milkweed on their lands in eastern Oklahoma. The grant is also funded, in part, by donations from the tribes, he said.

Of 115 projects seeking a slice of $3.3 million in funding, just 22 were chosen. If Taylor can find another source of money, he said four or five other Oklahoma tribes are interesting in joining the restoration effort.

Oklahoma, with forests in the east and sprawling croplands in the west, may seem an unlikely place to invest so much energy in restoring the monarch population.

Oklahoma, though, falls squarely in its migration pattern. Butterflies traveling north from winter habitats in Mexico typically stop in Oklahoma to lay eggs on the flowering milkweed.

Milkweed, coincidentally, happens to be the only plant that monarch caterpillars can eat.

Meanwhile, farmers and ranchers have successfully invested time, money and resources — such as herbicides — in combating the plant also considered a weed.

Taylor said saving milkweed isn’t just for the monarchs. He said 100 to 200 species rely on the habitat and nectar of the milkweed — though none as much as the butterfly.

Starting next year, his team will work with the tribes to cultivate the plants and build infrastructure, called hoop houses, needed to carry out restoration.

“It turns out there’s a lot of interest in learning how to do this,” he said. “It’s not rocket science, but it still takes some training.”

He said the tribes are ideal partners because they strongly value respect for the land. He also wanted to develop partnerships with individuals and entities that own large amounts of land.

“There is no other place in the country that offers this type of opportunity in dealing with large landowners,” he said.

Taylor hopes that when the tribes learn how to cultivate and grow milkweed, they’ll share their knowledge with others in their communities who also want to build habitats for pollinators.

Each tribe will receive 5,000 milkweed plugs that have been cultivated in a nursery. In addition, Taylor plans to produce another 7,500 plugs to sell directly to the public in Oklahoma next year. (The best time to plant in Oklahoma is April or May, and the plugs sell for about $1.50 each, plus shipping and handling.)

Taylor also founded and directs the Monarch Waystation program, which is devoted to ensuring there are places with the resources necessary for monarchs to reproduce and sustain their migration. His organization sells seed kits for $16, which includes nine packs of seed of milkweed and other nectar plants.

However, he encourages Oklahomans to plant milkweed plugs whenever possible because, while it can be grown by seed, it’s more difficult to get it to thrive that way, he said.

For now, Taylor’s restoration project will focus on areas east of Interstate 35. He hopes to one day work with farmers and landowners in western Oklahoma to rebuild the plant there.

“It may have a bad reputation but, in fact, it has never really cost farmers a lot to have a little milkweed in their fields,” he said. “So farmers should be quite comfortable putting it back into their landscape. We’re not only restoring this butterfly, but we’re restoring pollinators in general.

Janelle Stecklein covers the Oklahoma Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jstecklein@cnhi.com.