Tagging Monarch Butterflies

We began tagging Monarch Butterflies in a effort to learn more about their migration patterns, life span, effects of weather, and the differences in migration from year-to-year.

With tagging we hope to also learn about migration routes and encourage conservation of habitats critical to the survival of the monarch butterfly and its migration. In 2018 over 600 monarch butterflies were tagged in the garden, more than twice the number of previous years.

Existing data tells us that each latitude where Monarchs occur in the country has a peak migration time. Here on Mount Desert our latitude is 44.333N. Monarch peek migrating times are from August 10 to September 10.

Information is collected when tagged Monarchs are observed or found along their migration route and then compiled into a national database. Since 1994 over 11,000 Monarch Watch tag recoveries are now accessible via a searchable database.