It’s popular among some to blame Mexico for most everything lately but we share responsibility with our neighbor to the south for the demise of the monarch butterfly.

Which is why a roadside push to help the butterflies is both refreshing and encouraging.

With federal US Fish and Wildlife money, Massachusetts agencies plan to seed highway medians and roadsides with milkweed, the plant on which monarchs lay their eggs and on which their caterpillars must feed.

Monarchs were among the most common of butterflies here but researchers say there are now fewer than one-fifteenth as many monarchs as there were in 1997. Not so long ago, the orange and black butterflies were everywhere in New England — backyard gardens were visited by dozens at a time. This summer, weeks could go by without a sighting.

Not coincidentally, milkweed was among the most common of plants here back when monarchs were thriving but that, too, has changed.

Considered by many a roadside weed and nuisance, milkweed has been attacked with poison spray and weedwackers. Once abundant along South Coast roadsides, the East Bay Bike Path — lots of places — milkweed has fallen victim to our preference for the well-manicured look. And as milkweed goes, so go monarch butterflies.

Life has not been easy for monarchs in Mexico, their winter home, where loggers have stripped sections of the mountainous fir forests where the butterflies spend their winters. But those forests are now better protected and the cutting is diminished.

Simply demanding action from Mexico while ignoring our own part in the problem misses the point and accomplishes nothing.

The only hope for these creatures is a less heavy-handed approach by all — highway road crews, landscapers, homeowners — and creative approaches like this attempt to plant milkweed in medians.

Milkweed may be a 'weed' to some. To a monarch butterfly it is life itself.