Missouri volunteers lend helping hand tagging monarch butterflies during fall migration

HOLT COUNTY, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- The prairies of Northwest Missouri were fluttering with activity as community scientists and residents gathered this past weekend to offer a helping hand with migrating monarch butterfly research efforts.

With millions of monarch butterflies embarking on a long journey south to Mexico for the winter, residents were asked to participate in a unique citizens science event allowing them to help catch, tag and release the colorful pollinators Saturday at Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge in Holt County.

The event was held with guidance from the Missouri Master Naturalists and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, helping provide data on monarch migration to internationally renowned research programs like Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.

“In this field that we're working in, there's definitely a few thousand (monarchs)," said refuge manager William Kutosky with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Along their route, they need a food source and nectar is their food source, so the presence of monarchs is actually a good indicator that you have a healthy ecosystem."

Located roughly 30 miles northwest of St. Joseph, Loess Bluffs includes more than 1,000 acres of prairie, including the largest remaining tract of wet prairie in the state, with whole trees and wildflowers at times being blanketed by huge numbers of monarchs in a spectacular display over the weekend.

Saturday's event saw more than 20 volunteers explore areas of the refuge over several hours, helping capture more than 60 butterflies with large nets before tags -- roughly the size of a pea -- were carefully placed on their wings and released by the Loess Hills Chapter of the Missouri Master Naturalists.

"The (tags) have an adhesive on it. You press it gently on the butterfly's wing and hold it for about five seconds, and your body heat glues it to the wing and warms it up, and then we release them," said Bruce Windsor, a St. Joseph resident and member of the Loess Hills Chapter of the Missouri Master Naturalists, who assisted with tagging.

MMN is a natural resource education and volunteer service program sponsored by the Missouri Department of Conservation and University of Missouri Extension, helping with events like Saturdays as well as the popular Eagle Days events in December.

The monarchs at Loess Bluffs will gradually migrate south to the mountaintop forests of central Mexico, where they will stay until March in huge groups.

Some monarchs travel 2,500 to 3,000 miles during their annual fall migration between mid-August and early November. In the right conditions, monarchs can travel more than 100 miles in a single day.

"It's pretty remarkable to see them when they do roost in the trees because they actually have really good camouflage when their wings are closed; they actually look like leaves on the trees," Kutosky said. "They're providing that diversity here on the landscape that's going to cause them to return and use this as a migration stop along the route."

It was all smiles for young 1st grader Scarlette Lambert, who was thrilled to catch multiple butterflies on Saturday with her family.

"Daddy had to help me, I had to hold on to the net, and then we had to catch it," she said.

Data provided to Monarch Watch will be used to help study the timing and pace of their migrations, the mortality during the migration, as well as changes in geographic distribution, valuable information with steep population declines witnessed in recent decades.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, from 1996 to 2020, the eastern monarch butterfly population decreased by 88%, from an estimated 383 million to just under 45 million. The western overwintering population has dropped more than 99% as well since the 1980s, from 4.5 million to 1,914 monarchs.

In an effort to support monarch butterfly populations, Windsor and others have spent years planting hundreds of milkweed plants to strengthen the main food source for generations of monarch caterpillars.

"It's our goal to plant 10,000 plants in ten years, and we are now into the eighth year and we are right on track. We've done over 800 milkweed plants as well and we do it in the spring," he said.

Monarchs are just one of numerous wildlife species that can be found at Loess Bluffs, a 7,300-acre refuge and major destination for migratory birds like bald eagles, snow geese and trumpeter swans, among many others. The refuge also holds numerous year-round wildlife species.

“I would encourage anyone who's never seen a bald eagle, I'll guarantee you, if you come up here in early December, you'll see hundreds of bald eagles. Last year, we counted almost 800.”