Chris Kline, education coordinator for Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park, is seeking volunteers to help search for monarch butterflies during offsite research trips. The program objective is to capture, tag & release adults while exploring the edges of the state, & learn more about the travel corridors these insects use.
"Four years ago our small cadre of Arizona State Parks volunteers began sticking adhesive tags on the hind wings of monarch butterflies," said Kline. "We then released them in hopes of sighting & recovering, & then we began developing a mapping project to better understand the delicate insects' migration. More than 3,000 marked monarchs later, the most far-flung recoveries have come back from Mexico City."
Arizona Monarch Field Trip dates include Jacob's Lake, August 12th-15th; Springerville, August 16th; Canelo Hills, August 30th and September 14th; Hereford, September 6th; Blue River, October 2nd-4th; Hualapai Mountains, October 15th-17th; Perkinsville, October 18th; and Sonoita, November 1st. Participants are responsible for their own travel arrangements.
The Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Parks program is one of the few monarch butterfly tagging projects in the United States. Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park is located 3 miles west of Superior on U.S. 60.
For more details about the 2008 monarch research trips, call Chris Kline at (520) 689-2723 or visit btarboretum.org.