TORONTO, May 15, 2025 — As Canada shakes off winter and heads into planting season, thousands of volunteers from coast to coast to coast are digging in — literally. Starting the week after the May long weekend, the award-winning Butterflyway Project, led by the David Suzuki Foundation, will launch its 2025 planting blitz to create vital habitat corridors for pollinators in backyards, schoolyards, parks, balconies and boulevards.

This year’s campaign comes at a critical — and political — moment. As provinces like Ontario and Alberta move to weaken environmental protections and fast-track industrial development, Canadians are stepping up to defend biodiversity from the ground up.

“People are fed up with watching governments roll back environmental protections,” said Jode Roberts, Rewilding Project Manager at the David Suzuki Foundation. “The Butterflyway Project is a peaceful but powerful act of resistance. Every milkweed, every native bloom, is a stand for pollinators, climate action and common sense.”

What’s new in 2025:

  • Bylaws for biodiversity: In response to growing tensions between gardeners and municipal bylaws, the Foundation is launching a nationwide push to protect habitat gardens as essential infrastructure.
  • Standing against environmental rollbacks: The Butterflyway Project is also emerging as a quiet act of resistance against a wave of deregulation, including Ontario’s proposed repeal of its Endangered Species Act.
  • New pollinator-friendly zones: Municipalities including Guelph and Victoria are moving to recognize Butterflyways as part of their official biodiversity strategies.
  • Community climate resilience: More than just a gardening initiative, the Butterflyway builds ecological resilience to drought, flooding and food insecurity through native plant restoration.

Since its launch in 2017, the Butterflyway Project has:

  • Planted more than 116,500 native wildflowers and grasses
  • Planted approximately 3,150 trees and shrubs
  • Established 7,400 habitat gardens
  • Established 139 Butterflyways (a Butterflyway is 12 or more habitat gardens in close proximity)

Dorte Windmuller, a Butterflyway Ranger in Cliffcrest, Ontario, says turning her yard into a pollinator haven has breathed new life into her garden.

“Transforming my garden into a pollinator garden by replacing lawns where we don’t use the lawns with native plants has brought back so much life,” she says. “It is great fun and rewarding to see and observe so many different kinds of bees, butterflies and birds calling my garden their home now. Seeing the land wake up to its intended abundance is incredibly rewarding. And for a gardener, it is delightful to discover the beauty, elegance and exuberance of our native plants.”

According to Roberts, “Habitat loss is one of the biggest drivers of species decline, but it’s also one of the easiest to reverse — if we plant with purpose. As some politicians try to erase environmental protections behind closed doors, this movement is planting a loud, living ‘no’ right in the soil.”

For more information about the Butterflyway Project, visit www.davidsuzuki.org/butterflyway.

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For more information, please contact:
Stefanie Carmichael, David Suzuki Foundation: scarmichael@davidsuzuki.org.

About: The David Suzuki Foundation (davidsuzuki.org) is a leading Canadian environmental non-profit organization. The Foundation has offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. The Butterflyway Project is an award-winning national campaign to create pollinator habitat in communities throughout Canada.