The Monarch Butterfly Crusader

Honestly, I think monarchs are used more than any other creature, as a symbol of everything good. :)

I've been keeping an eye on my guerilla garden caterpillars. Most didn't make it, but this one did. There were sturdier plants nearby, but it chose this grass to pupate on. This is beside a main street in Toronto.

The milkweed was slated for removal, not belonging in the front annual bed. Then I took a closer look.

We have some more updates in our radio-tag first-generation monarchs research project!

After radio-tagging monarchs in Texas and Oklahoma, we also tagged and deployed monarchs in Lawrence, Kansas, toward the end of May. Like with the monarchs released in the other states, our goal is to study when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

After some smaller detections, several tagged monarchs started getting detected in different states. Here are a few highlights as of June 9:

📍 MW-KS-005 has traveled the furthest from Lawrence, with detections in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Manitoba, Canada!

📍Four monarchs have made it to Minnesota so far (MW-KS-012, -0018, -009, and -008).

📍 MW-KS-008 has been detected in four states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Read more about this project on our website, and cycle through the images on the page to watch the progress of the radio-tagged monarchs. Link in our bio!



Monarch Watch has been participating in the Project Monarch Collaboration, an exciting research project led by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center to deploy solar-powered radio tags on migratory monarch butterflies and study their migration. As an extension of that project, we've been initiating research to answer questions about the spring migration - specifically, when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

One of the most important host plants you can have in your garden is milkweed! Find these native seeds here: https://tinyurl.com/PlantNativeMilkweeds

My new granddaughter is wrapped up in a monarch blanket, of course.

Do you remember this from 2021?

Fly Monarca - Official Trailer - 2835 km World Record Paragliding Journey In pursuit of a dream, and inspired by a butterfly, an ambitious paraglider pilot attempts to fly across the United States, from Mexico to Canada, relying so...

This just in!

We are learning that some monarchs do fly back from Florida! 🦋

Monarchs are famous for migrating to their overwintering sites in Mexico and California, but every year, some actually end their journeys in Florida. It’s always been a bit of a mystery what happens to these butterflies. One idea is that they and their offspring stay in Florida and get absorbed into a year-round residential population that never leaves.

But thanks to new Bluetooth radio tags, Xerces scientists discovered that monarchs that overwintered in the panhandle and north-central Florida had offspring that flew north this spring, with one making it as far as Alabama!

Depending on the numbers of monarchs emerging and migrating north from Florida, these migrants could add to populations in the Northeast, but there is a risk. A high percentage of monarchs in many Florida cities and suburbs are infected with a protozoan parasite called OE. OE is spread largely from non-native tropical milkweed. Native milkweeds die back each winter, killing off the parasites, but tropical milkweed does not, leading to a buildup of parasites.

Thankfully, we’ve found that monarchs overwintering in Florida’s natural areas with native plants had low levels of OE! Floridians should continue to support the conservation of public lands in their state, and replace tropical milkweed with native species.

Learn more about this discovery ⤵️

https://xerces.org/press/florida-may-play-bigger-role-in-monarch-butterfly-survival-than-previously-thought

(We corrected a mistake in this post: Originally it said that the monarchs that overwintered in Florida flew north, but it was in fact those monarchs' offspring, as stated in the press release.)