Monarch Tagging…An Important Activity Is Impacted by Low Numbers

My typical August citizen science activity won’t take place this year.

Image by author, Carol Labuzzetta, 2015.

Monarch butterfly numbers are down. Way down. As I wrote in late July, there are thousands of milkweed plants, lining roadsides and standing in backyard gardens uneaten. This is beyond disturbing to me.

For the last twenty-one years, I’ve been heavily involved in the conservation of monarch butterflies. You name the activity, I’ve done it. The community I lived in benefited from my expertise. Thousands of children and hundreds of adults have heard presentations by me about this tiny iconic creature that is foreshadowing greater problems to come. One of the world’s naturally occurring and awe-inspiring migrations is at great risk of ending.

At this time of year, from late August to early September, since 2015 I’ve tagged monarch butterflies. Tagging is an activity that involves citizen scientists, such as me, in helping to gather data on monarch migration.

This last generation of monarchs (there are 4–5 generations of monarchs born each summer, depending on where you live in North America), is the “super generation” that makes the migration to central Mexico to overwinter. Monarchs born earlier in the breeding season do not migrate but parish as…