North Iowa Outdoors: Monarch Tagging Program Scheduled

The Winnebago County Conservation Board will be hosting their annual Monarch Tagging program on Thursday evening, September 3rd , at the Hanson Nature Center. A program about the Monarch butterfly will be given at 6:00 PM, with a tagging session afterwards. Hanson Nature Center is located at 41600 Highway 69, about two miles north of Leland.
The Monarch butterfly is unique in the insect world for the amazing migration it makes every year. In fact, some Monarch butterflies travel over 2,000 miles to reach their wintering grounds in the mountains of central Mexico!

For many years, scientists have been studying this migration to understand how such tiny creatures can navigate and find their way to the same location each year, although they’ve never been there before. Monarchs, therefore, have a unique problem because they depend upon two very different habitats for their survival—the open fields and prairies of North America for reproduction, and the mountainous forests of Mexico for overwintering. So, scientists are also studying Monarchs to better understand how they adapt to changes in these two distinct habitats. And, with climate change accelerating, and Monarch populations plummeting, this research is more important now than ever before.
For 28 years, the Winnebago County Conservation Board has been helping with this research by tagging Monarch butterflies each fall. Tagging provides scientists with excellent information about where the Monarchs go, how they utilize their environment, how their population changes over time, and how various environmental factors affect their population. And, through this upcoming program, the public can also help with this research!

So, after the program, there will be some Monarch butterflies available for people to tag and release. But, since there’s no guarantee on how many will be available, people are also encouraged to bring their own Monarchs to tag, or they borrow a net and try their luck at catching some Monarchs at the nature center! For more information about the WCCB’s Monarch Tagging program, people can contact Winnebago County Naturalist Lisa Ralls at 641-567-3390 or at lisa.ralls@winnebagocountyiowa.gov.