Butterfly Conservation

Monarch Butterfly Fund

The Monarch Butterfly Fund (MBF) fosters the continued survival of the monarch butterfly and their migration in North America through:

• Collaboration with organizations in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.
• Support of reforestation and conservation projects that engage local communities.
• Support of scientific research, including habitat and species assessments.
• Training of eco-tour guides and support of reforestation activities.
• Support of projects that improve the livelihood of local residents, and activities that increase tourism-related income.

Monarch Watch

Monarch Watch is a nonprofit education, conservation, and research program based at the University of Kansas that focuses on the monarch butterfly, its habitat, and its spectacular fall migration. Monarch Watch strives to provide the public with information about the biology of monarch butterflies, their spectacular migration, and how to use monarchs to further science education in primary and secondary schools. They engage in research on monarch migration biology and monarch population dynamics to better understand how to conserve the monarch migration. They also promote protection of monarch habitats throughout North America.

World Wildlife Fund

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) works to preserve vital butterfly habitat in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Reserve by promoting good forest management and sustainable tourism. WWF also supports mushroom and tree nurseries that help restore the forest in the Reserve which creates new sources of income for the local communities that live among the butterflies. WWF helped create the Monarch Butterfly Conservation Fund to offer long-term economic incentives to communities committed to preserving forest in the Reserve’s core zone. The Fund’s benefits accrue to those communities which succeed in reducing illegal logging in the area.

New Jersey Audubon Society: Cape May Bird Observatory

Researchers at Cape May Bird Observatory (part of the New Jersey Audubon Society) are working to monitor numbers of migrating monarchs and to learn about how varying environmental factors influence their migration. The Monarch Monitoring Project includes 3 standardized census counts each day between September 1 and October 31. Censuses were first begun in 1991, making their project the longest continuous quantitative study of migrating monarchs in the world. Thousands of monarch butterflies are tagged each year in Cape May. Dozens of monarchs tagged in Cape May have been found in Mexico. Additionally, tagged monarchs are sometimes caught again at areas to our south, providing valuable data about the speed and routes of the migration.