A small crowd gathered in the pavilion at Blue Heron Park in Phoenix, Oregon, to witness monarch butterflies on their maiden flights.
Kids circled around a vase of colorful flowers as David James, an entomologist at Washington State University, plucked a butterfly from a cardboard box and placed it on a bloom.
“You can see the tag, right?” James said, pointing out a solar panel the size of a grain of rice affixed to the monarch’s thorax. An antenna ran the length of the abdomen.
The kids pressed in, marveling at the orange-and-black insects and their strange cargo.
The monarch was one of 22 James fitted on the morning of Sept. 17 with tiny solar-powered transmitters. The devices, developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies, weigh just 60 milligrams — about 10% of an adult monarch’s weight — and allow researchers and the public to follow a butterfly’s migration in near real time.
For scientists trying to understand the movement of the struggling western monarch population, that could provide far more information than traditional paper tags.
“We don't know for sure what's going to happen,” said James. “That's why it's so exciting.”
After a few minutes on a flower, one of the monarchs lifted off and fluttered into a nearby tree, cheered on by onlookers.
These butterflies have long journeys ahead of them. If they’re lucky, they will migrate hundreds of miles to their wintering grounds: groves of trees along the California coast.
The new tags are already offering glimpses of how they get there.
One butterfly, named WR131 Simone, was released in Elkton, Oregon, and detected a day later 95 miles away near Gold Beach.
“This is a record,” said Robert Coffan, co-founder of Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates.
Another monarch tagged in Portland headed southeast and was last detected in Bend. James is watching to see whether it continues east across the Rocky Mountains.
“They may actually be joining the eastern population, which would mean that they would go to the very famous Mexican overwintering colonies,” James said.
Western monarchs in trouble
North America is home to two main migratory populations of monarch butterflies. The much larger eastern population winters primarily in Mexico, while the western population winters along the California coast.
Western monarch numbers have fallen dramatically. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service warns that western monarchs have more than a 95% probability of going extinct within the next 60 years.
Habitat loss and pesticide exposure are the main drivers of the monarch’s decline. James has studied the effects of neonicotinoids, a class of insecticides widely used to treat agricultural crops. One of his studies found exposure to these chemicals shortened butterflies’ lives without killing them.
“They don't die straight away, but they don't have their full reproductive potential or do all the things they're meant to do,” said James.
Better information about where monarchs travel could help conservationists target habitat work along migration routes.
Up until now, James and the citizen scientists he works with relied on tiny stickers attached to the butterfly’s wings. The tags can reveal where a butterfly traveled, but only if someone finds it.
In 2011, James began working with inmates in Washington State to raise and tag hundreds of monarchs. Others later joined the effort, helping uncover more about the monarchs’ migration routes.
Tanya Havniear began raising monarchs at her Talent home about eight years ago. At first, she thought it would be a fun activity to do with her two kids, but when she learned western monarchs were struggling, she joined Southern Oregon Monarch Advocates, a local group dedicated to monarch conservation and education.
Every summer, Havniear plucks monarch eggs from the milkweed growing in her yard and transfers them to mesh enclosures on her back porch.
About two and a half weeks after an egg is laid, the caterpillar that hatches from it forms a chrysalis. Until then, the black, yellow and white-striped caterpillars eat only milkweed, and keeping them supplied with fresh leaves is a daily task.
“I try and cut [the milkweed] back so that it keeps growing,” said Havniear. “They eat a lot.”
Havniear has tagged between 200 and 300 butterflies over the last eight years. Two of these have been spotted, or recovered, on the California coast: one in Bolinas and another in Pacific Grove.
“It’s pretty special to know they've traveled 400-plus miles from my house,” Havniear said.
Fewer than 1% of butterflies sporting paper tags are ever recovered. The electronic trackers can provide many more data points along a butterfly’s route.
The tags transmit at the same wavelength as Bluetooth, and most cell phones can pick up their signal. The Project Monarch app also lets users track the tagged butterflies in near real time.
Local advocates step up
California and Washington don’t allow citizens to rear, tag or even handle monarch butterflies without a special permit, making Oregon and Idaho the focal points for James’ e-tagging project.
When James announced plans to tag butterflies in Oregon, grassroots advocacy groups like SOMA coordinated their efforts to ensure enough newly emerged butterflies would be available.
“Everybody rallied,” Coffan said.
Controlled rearing of monarchs made the tagging possible in Southern Oregon, said Tom Landis, a retired ecologist and SOMA member.
Another member, Belinda Vos, collected more than 200 monarch eggs.
“I distributed the eggs to monarch advocates in the Rogue Valley and even took some to Brookings,” said Landis. “Luckily, the timing worked out, and we had enough monarchs for the e-tagging.”
The transmitters were another hurdle. They cost $200 each. James partnered with an Idaho-based group called Wings Rising and invited people to “adopt” a butterfly to help pay for the tags.
“I thought even if we get 12 people, that would be good,” said James. “We ended up getting 200 people adopting monarchs.”
Each adopted butterfly has a name. There’s a Flappy, a Fern and a Betsy. Several are named Simone, after Coffan’s late wife, a monarch advocate who died last year.
The tracking data could help researchers pinpoint important migration corridors and places butterflies stop to feed.
James has suspected that some butterflies take the coastal route to get to their wintering grounds. If the new tags confirm that, the data could help conservationists identify where along the route to plant nectar-bearing flowers.
“It will give us a better picture of the areas that they're using, and then we can make those areas better for them, because they do need nectar to keep them going as they migrate,” James said.
James had tagged monarchs in several Oregon communities this year, including Portland, Bend and Elkton. Twenty-two more left Phoenix that morning, joining butterflies released in Brookings, Ashland and Klamath Falls. Another 100 had been tagged and released in Idaho earlier in the month.Some were already reaching the California coast.
Katie Boehnlein, a teacher at Logos Charter School in Medford, brought several of her students to the release event in Phoenix. After years of raising monarchs and tagging them with paper tags, she was eager for her students to follow the newly released butterflies through the Project Monarch app.
“I feel like monarchs are an entryway for kids to learn about pollinators and their importance,” Boehnlein said.
Now, they can watch where the butterflies go.
“This is next level,” she said.
