Monarchs Needs Your Help! Monarch Monitoring Research Opportunity

Laurie Sheppard, Class of 2017

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. They arrived a little late this year, reaching El Rosario a few days after Dia de los Muertos. Some stragglers were still seen in Grayson County in late November, and hopefully, they made it all the way to Mexico.

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.

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, identify monarch eggs and larvae, and the structure of the surveys themselves will be held in early 2024. The monitoring team conducts surveys at three locations on the refuge, each a little different in 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. Surveys are conducted in late March through mid-May and in October through early November. Exact dates for the surveys are based on the availability of volunteers and a weather forecast that is favorable to monarch flight.

If you think you might be interested in joining this fun and interesting project, please email Laurie Sheppard (Class of 2017) at lshepstew@gmail.com.

Informational Meeting Wednesday, February 28 at 1pm

Read more about this opportunity at the Friends of Hagerman Website