State park visitors net, tag monarch butterflies

To mark the beginning of the Monarch butterfly migration, two dozen amateur naturalists grabbed nets and cameras Saturday afternoon, Aug. 31 at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park.

The event was lead by Katy Gillispie, who told visitors in the park's amphitheater that the butterflies need quality nectar from two vital prairie flowers Blazing Star and Joe Pye Weed, to make their long migration to their wintering grounds in Mexico.

Gillispie, a member of Friends of Big Woods State Park, then lead a car caravan to the park's prairie for a short hike.

Andy Wendt, Nerstrand Big Woods Park naturalist, showed the adults and children how to properly use a butterfly net but catching the plant the butterfly is in. "We don't want to hurt them," said Wendt. "We want them to go to Mexico for the winter."

According to the Monarch Watch website, the Monarch Watch Tagging Program is a large-scale community science project that was initiated in 1992 to help understand the dynamics of the monarch's spectacular fall migration through mark and recapture.

Tagging was originally used by Dr. Fred Urquhart of the University of Toronto help locate overwintering monarchs and later to determine where monarchs came from that wintered in Mexico. Our long-range tagging program at Monarch Watch continues to reveal much more. Tagging helps answer questions about the origins of monarchs that reach Mexico, the timing and pace of the migration, mortality during the migration, and changes in geographic distribution. It also shows that the probability of reaching Mexico is related to geographic location, size of the butterfly, and the date (particularly as this relates to the migration window for a given location).

In order to be able to associate the geographic "mark" location with that of any subsequent recapture, each butterfly tagged must be uniquely coded. A new series of unique codes is generated for each tagging season and printed using permanent inks on all-weather tags with a pressure-sensitive adhesive backing. These lightweight, circular tags were designed by Monarch Watch specifically for tagging monarchs. When applied as directed, the tags do not interfere with flight or otherwise harm the butterflies.

Each fall more than a quarter of a million tags are distributed to thousands of volunteers across North America who tag monarchs as they migrate through their area. These "community scientists" capture monarchs throughout the migration season, record the tag code, tag date, gender of the butterfly, and geographic location then tag and release them. At the end of the tagging season, these data are submitted to Monarch Watch and added to our database to be used in research.