Monarch Monitoring Team

It's winter and the Monarch butterflies that migrated through north Texas are settled in the pine and oyamel trees in the Sierra Madre mountains. You may have noticed the large number of Monarchs that came through Grayson and Collin Counties in late October. It was an unusually good year for us.

Volunteers at Hagerman NWR conduct several surveys of migrating Monarchs each spring and fall as part of the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program (IMMP) - a national program that documents milkweed, nectar plant, and monarch use data from various land-use types and regions. Information gathered at National Wildlife Refuges like Hagerman is an important part of the research shaping scientists' understanding of how monarchs interact with their environment and how the population and its habitat changes over time.

The Monarch Monitoring team conducts surveys at two locations on the refuge, each with a different dominant habitat. We walk in pairs over a marked grid pattern and identify the blooming plants at measured intervals. We also check each milkweed sprout or stem for the presence of monarch eggs or caterpillars and note every adult monarch we see. Three surveys are conducted at each site on weekdays in late March through mid-May and two in October through early November.

As with many such projects, the IMMP at Hagerman is looking for additional volunteers willing to commit a few field hours during the spring and fall migrations of everyone's favorite butterfly. Training in how to document blooming plants and identify Monarch eggs and larvae, as well as the structure of the surveys themselves will be held before the first survey. Exact dates for the surveys are determined based on the availability of volunteers and a weather forecast that is favorable to monarch flight.

Please register here for more information about how you can join the Monarch Monitoring Team.

Photo by Laurie Sheppard