Washington Island Middle Schoolers Tag Monarchs

Story and photos by Tim Sweet

Eighteen Washington Island middle school students and two of their teachers joined volunteers from Friends of Plum and Pilot Islands and Frank Gercz of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Plum Island last Friday to tag monarchs. The group captured, tagged and released 28 butterflies, and the students uploaded their data to monarchwatch.org when they returned to school. 

Thank you to all who were involved in making this event a success, with special thanks going to Jim Robinson of Shoreline Scenic Cruises & Charters for donating the transportation to get the students to the island.

Monarchs are tagged so that people who find them can submit the recovery information via the Monarch Watch Tag Recover Form, and it can then be added to the database. Visit monarchwatch.org to read more details about the program. 

According to Monarch Watch, the majority of the recovered tags are obtained from central Mexico at overwintering sites, particularly in El Rosario and Sierra Chincua. The organization reports that the ratio of untagged to tagged monarchs is quite high among the dead butterflies on the trails and under the monarch-covered trees. The organization pays approximately $5 for each tag, which it considers “reasonable compensation for the time and energy spent locating them.”