Monarch Meadow

We have some more updates in our radio-tag first-generation monarchs research project!

After radio-tagging monarchs in Texas and Oklahoma, we also tagged and deployed monarchs in Lawrence, Kansas, toward the end of May. Like with the monarchs released in the other states, our goal is to study when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.

After some smaller detections, several tagged monarchs started getting detected in different states. Here are a few highlights as of June 9:

📍 MW-KS-005 has traveled the furthest from Lawrence, with detections in Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Manitoba, Canada!

📍Four monarchs have made it to Minnesota so far (MW-KS-012, -0018, -009, and -008).

📍 MW-KS-008 has been detected in four states: Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Read more about this project on our website, and cycle through the images on the page to watch the progress of the radio-tagged monarchs. Link in our bio!


Monarch Watch has been participating in the Project Monarch Collaboration, an exciting research project led by Cellular Tracking Technologies and Cape May Point Arts and Science Center to deploy solar-powered radio tags on migratory monarch butterflies and study their migration. As an extension of that project, we've been initiating research to answer questions about the spring migration - specifically, when first-generation monarchs would stop moving north.