Arlene Koziol
Volunteers tag a monarch butterfly at Goose Pond Sanctuary on Sept. 5, before it flies thousands of miles south.
Right now monarchs are on the move, making their annual migration from Madison and points north to the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. But before the iconic orange and black butterflies fly away, the Madison Audubon Society is inviting the public to help tag these vanishing symbols of summer to learn more about their odyssey.
A 3-centimeter-long monarch will fly a distance upwards of 100 million body lengths while migrating, the equivalent of a person traveling five times around the Earth.
“We’ve always had migrating monarchs on our sanctuary properties,” says Matt Reetz, executive director of the Madison Audubon Society. “A few years ago we decided to join the citizen science group Monarch Watch out of the University of Kansas.”
Arlene Koziol
The first year about 50 monarchs were tagged at the Goose Pond Sanctuary 15 miles north of Madison, and in the following two years more than 400 more were sent south with a Monarch Watch tag.
Of those butterflies, three have been recovered and their final location reported, says Mark Martin, co-manager of Goose Pond. All three made their way to the same Mexican village.
The butterflies are tagged with a sticker little bigger than a hole punch pressed gently to their wings, close to their centers of gravity. As tags are reported along the migration route, they help answer questions about the geographic origins of monarchs that reach Mexico, the time and pace of their migration and mortality during migration. Taggers can check on the website to see if their butterfly was recovered and where.
Monarchs have been following this path since the last ice age, but it is an increasingly difficult and dangerous journey. And though their numbers are up a little this year, monarch populations have dropped by 90% in the last 25 years.
“Along their migration route they have lost a lot of habitat,” says Reetz. “In our area each year, upon their return to Wisconsin, monarchs lay eggs on milkweed plants. The eggs turn into caterpillars that can only eat milkweed, which is being eliminated by agricultural pesticides and roadside mowing. After the caterpillars become butterflies, they need nectar plants, and we have done a pretty good job of eliminating the places where they can fuel up on nectar.”
“When they get to Mexico, they roost in specific trees that have become valuable as lumber,” Reetz continues. “They are threatened all the way there and back. They need our help.”
John Rodstrom, a UW-Madison grad student who studies migratory fish was one of the volunteers Saturday at Goose Pond. “It doesn’t matter if you are a bird, a fish or a butterfly,” he says. “If you need to migrate in order to reproduce, then habitat loss along your migration route can be a significant problem.”
Reetz says people can get involved in butterfly conservation in small ways. “Plant milkweed and native flowers for them to nectar on in your yard.”
Flowers that provide the high-quality nectar in the fall include meadow blazing star, known as the monarch magnet, goldenrod, native thistles and sawtooth sunflowers.
As of Monday, Audubon volunteers had tagged 475 monarchs. The public tagging project is still going on this coming Saturday.
Reetz hopes to use up all 700 tags he ordered from Monarch Watch before the last monarchs head south. To join the tagging project this Saturday, go to the Madison Audubon Society website to register for details.
“Last Saturday was a slow day for tagging monarchs,” says Reetz. “The temperature was cool, and monarchs are less active when it’s cool. Most of the monarchs we saw were higher up, actually migrating on a wind from the north. Still, we had 65 people show up, and we tagged 81 monarch butterflies.”
