Monarch Butterfly Conservation

Through this project BBEMA is coordinating a tag and release program of Monarch butterflies to collaborate and collect data in partnership with other ecologist across North America to better understand and track monarch population trends.

Tagging allows ecologists to associate the location of capture/tag/release of Monarch populations across North America with the point of recovery for each butterfly in Central Mexico.  The data from these tagged butterflies is used to determine the pathways taken by migrating monarchs, the influence of weather on the migration, the survival rate of the monarchs and overall help us protect and conserve butterfly habitats throughout the migration flyway.

Why do we tag Monarchs? Many questions remain unanswered about the fall migration of the monarch population east of the Rocky Mountains. How do the monarchs move across the continent, i.e. do they move in specific directions or take certain pathways? How is the migration influenced by the weather and are there differences in the migration from year to year? We need data to answer these questions and we need your help! Only through the cooperative efforts of volunteer taggers will we be able to obtain sufficient recoveries and observations of the migration to answer these questions.