Monarch migration comeback

By Kerri on December 27, 2013 in Blog

photo by Ken Slade, courtesy of use through Creative Commons

Last week, the New York Times published a piece about the great monarch migration—and the effect the loss of milkweed plants has had on the monarch population. For the study, the NYT made Iowa their home base, studying milkweed and monarchs at the Tallgrass Prairie Center in Cedar Falls.

“But it remains an uphill struggle. The number of monarchs that completed the largest and most arduous migration this fall, from the northern United States and Canada to a mountainside forest in Mexico, dropped precipitously, apparently to the lowest level yet recorded. In 2010 at the University of Northern Iowa, a summertime count in some 100 acres of prairie grasses and flowers turned up 176 monarchs; this year, there were 11.”

Read the full article here.