For a research that proved that Monarch butterflies migrate from the Pacific Northwest to California in late summer, citizen scientists from Washington and inmates from the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla tagged about 15,000 butterflies for about 5 years. The inmates were given special training on how to raise and tag the Monarch butterflies. The study confirmed that these butterflies travel nearly 500 miles during late summer and early fall. David James, professor of entomology at Washington state University said, “On average, these butterflies averaged almost 40 miles of travel each day. That’s pretty remarkable for such a small creature.” James, who also led the research project said that the study was done with the help of thousands of volunteers and took a lot of time and coordination to achieve the results.
The research team could not figure out how the butterflies manage to travel such long distances, but they have made a strong guess that the Monarchs ride on the warm air currents thousand feet up above the ground in the air called thermals. According to James, the butterflies use the powerful upper-air currents to navigate. The paper was published in the Journal of the Lepidopterists‘ Society and it explained how volunteers tagged and released 13,778 Monarch butterflies between 2012 and 2016. The butterflies were released from around Washington, Idaho and British Columbia. The butterflies have recovered away from their release points which were about six miles apart from their release points.
Since migration is a very vulnerable period for Monarch butterflies, the results of the study will help locate the migratory corridors of the butterflies so that the corridors can be filled with flowers. “They need fuel, which is nectar from flowers,” explained James. “If we have large areas without flowers, then they won’t make it.” The population of Monarch butterflies have seen a massive decline in recent years. Over the past two decades, the population has said to be declined nearly 90 percent. Providing nectar during the migratory period would help the Monarchs survive the migration. James agree that he could not have been able to achieve the said results if not for the help of the citizens, “The results we got would have been impossible without their help, whether that’s the prisoners or just people that care about butterflies who have contacted us.”
These findings are not really new because it was discovered back in the 1960’s – 1990’s that the California coast is the winter destination of fall migrant monarchs departing from the Pacific Northwest. During those 3 decades citizen scientists in the Pacific Northwest used tags supplied by Prof. Fred Urquhart at the University of Toronto, the San Diego based Monarch Program and by the Western Monarch Migration Project based in Salem, Oregon.