Monarch Mania at Quivera National Wildlife Refuge

Having grown up on a farm I’ve been a part of many livestock tagging adventures.

These escapades always took place in a barn or corral and involved smelly cattle, sheep or hogs, manure, dust and flies. We attended a tagging event Saturday that took place in the wide open spaces and fresh air at Quivera National Wildlife Refuge and involved mostly exuberant kids with butterfly nets.

Known as Monarch Mania, this 13th annual event at Quivera was a “citizen scientist project,” meaning volunteers were used to net and tag monarch butterflies migrating through on their annual fall trek from as far north as southern Canada enroute to central Mexico.

Pamela Martin, local monarch guru from the Kansas Wetlands Education Center, and member of the volunteer group “Friends of Quivera,” presided over the morning’s events which began with games and crafts for the kids, all centered around monarch butterflies.

Local butterfly raiser Imogene Hall had a display showing how she actually raiser monarchs at her home in Reno County. Just prior to heading for the field, we were all given a “netting demonstration” by Quivera Visitors Services Specialist Barry Jones.

Barry stressed not chasing the butterflies, but following them until they land, then using a smooth sideways “swooping” motion to envelope them in the net. The taggers were divided amongst several team leaders, a.k.a. biologists and staff members from Quivera, nets were passed out and the river of youthful butterfly baggers, nets in hand, flowed out the door. Joyce and I “tagged” along with Pamela to get the “scoop” on the process.

For years, The University of Kansas has studied monarch migration attempting to understand how the butterflies navigate, whether by the sun, the earth’s magnetic field or if their actions are simply instinctual. The tagging program began in 1992 and each year KU prints 100,000 of the tiny 3/8 inch diameter adhesive tags and mails them to a myriad of locations east of the Rocky Mountains. Each tag contains the words “MONARCH WATCH,” a KU web site and toll free phone number plus the number assigned to that butterfly.

Pamela explained monarch butterflies need two things to survive; shelter and nectar, so she urged the kids to look for them this morning along tree rows or among the abundant goldenrod, which is one of their favorite nectar sources. Soon cries of “I got one” could be heard and team leaders began assisting successful netters with the tagging process.

The first one caught in our group was a little tattered and the worse-for-wear, probably from being attacked by a bird. Pamela gingerly plucked the butterfly from the net and opened its wings to explain how to determine its gender. Two scent glands, tiny but distinctive black dots toward the back of each wing told us this one was a male.

Folding its wings together and gently grasping it between her thumb and index finger at the thickest, sturdiest part of its wings nearest its body, she applied one of the tiny adhesive tags to the underside of one wing, and gave the butterfly back to the girl who had caught it to be released into the air. Its gender and tag number were recorded on a form and as it fluttered away, we all wondered aloud how far it would get with its wings in such bad repair.

Amazing to me is the fact the butterflies being caught Saturday were three or four generations removed from the adults caught here last year, as monarchs complete three to four reproductive cycles each year. Pamela explained these butterflies have an eight to nine month lifespan and will die upon reaching central Mexico or before.

Dr. Orly “Chip” Taylor, Monarch Watch director and professor of entomology at KU used to take a group of grad students to central Mexico each fall in pursuit of tagged monarchs, searching for them on the forest floors and hoping the native villagers there would also help by finding and saving dead tagged butterflies. He has since developed a better and more effective strategy. Forest guides, mostly at El Rosario the butterfly colony most visited by tourists, collect tags found on dead butterflies beneath the trees covered with butterflies.

Tags are rare since there is only one tag per 20,000 to 40,000 butterflies so searching for tags takes hours. Monarch Watch pays them 50 pesos (about $5) for each recovered tag; reasonable compensation Taylor feels for the two to three hours of searching for each tag found as they are patrolling or guiding in the forest. The Monarch Watch crew makes a brief visit to the area near the end of each season to buy the tags, the data from which has proven very valuable.

Each year, the Monarch Mania crew at Quivera catches several monarchs ahead of time so volunteers will have some to tag even if the weather is prohibitive. This year, including the twenty three caught early, 53 monarch butterflies were caught, tagged and released to continue their annual journey southward.

Since the inception of the tagging program in 1992, more than 11,000 tags have been returned, the farthest to date from 1,285 miles away. … Monarch Mania; yet another way to Explore Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland is a syndicated outdoors columnist, and can be contacted by e-mail at stevegilliland@idkcom.net.