A couple Saturdays ago, a group of a dozen volunteers gathered on Ole Schell’s family ranch in Bolinas – sleeves rolled to the elbows, ready to toil in the soil, all under the cause of aiding the deeply challenged monarch butterflies.
The group was tasked with planting 850 plants awarded to Schell in a grant through the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation, a group devoted to helping to save bees and butterflies, among others.
A year-and-a-half ago, Schell began converting part of the ranch into a butterfly paradise, filling it with butterfly-friendly plants in an effort to lure them back to a territory that was once a main