From 26 July to 4 August 2024, more than 5,000 people across Canada, Mexico and the United States reported more than 16,000 monarch sightings and 68,000 milkweed plants. This marks a significant increase compared to last year’s nearly 1,800 participants. 

Data collected during the Blitz are published in the Trinational Monarch Knowledge Network a repository of information that is available for anyone to consult and download.This snapshot of the monarch butterfly and its breeding locations helps scientists better understand how to protect and conserve one of North America’s most iconic species. Each year, monarch butterflies migrate up to 5,000 kilometers, facing multiple challenges along their journey, including habitat loss and impacts from climate change. 

A trinational mobilization 

The Blitz provides a unique opportunity for individuals and organizations to get involved and help collaborate beyond national borders to protect this emblematic North American species. 

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, monarch conservation efforts play a crucial role in supporting a wide range of species and ecosystems. Because monarch butterflies rely on natural resources shared with many other species, they serve as natural indicators of the overall health of the ecosystems they inhabit and pass through. 

Participating in the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz offers our community a unique summertime opportunity to unite in conservation, support the at-risk monarch butterfly, and team up with fellow nature enthusiasts across North America. It’s a fantastic opportunity to contribute to a continent-wide bioblitz and play a hands-on role in protecting the beloved monarch butterfly.

Canada is home to the most northern populations of monarchs meaning they also have the farthest distance to travel to and from their Mexico wintering grounds. The Monarch Blitz engaged people in this amazing migratory feat while providing valuable information on monarch and their milkweed host plants’ distribution. This is an essential bit of information as distributions may shift with climate change, especially here in Canada at the northern limit of where they’re found.

In Profauna’s Correo Real program we work so that interest in Mexico in the monarch butterfly and its migration is maintained all year long. That is why the Monarch Blitz is very important to us: by promoting it, citizens and other social actors learn that organizations and institutions throughout North America are working together to generate key information to help us in the butterfly’s conservation. Furthermore, this initiative helps us boost environmental education and community science activities that will bring the subject closer to the community and involve more people in monarch conservation.

ith observation, documentation and the understanding of nature at the heart of their approach, community science activities create a powerful connection between wonder, the acquisition of knowledge and a sense of contributing. They foster enriching collaboration between the general public and scientists, and are thus, a remarkable tool in protecting the environment and preserving biodiversity.

Community-science programs  

In Canada:  

• Mission Monarch (mission-monarch.org/en)  
• iNaturalist Canada (inaturalist.ca)  

In the U.S.:  

• Journey North (journeynorth.org)  
• Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (mlmp.org)  
• Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper (monarchmilkweedmapper.org)  
• iNaturalist (iNaturalist.org)  

In Mexico:  

• NaturaLista (naturalista.mx)  
• Correo Real (correoreal.mx)  

The International Monarch Monitoring Blitz is organized by the Trinational Monarch Conservation Partnership, which is the result of the collaboration of the following organizations: the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CCE), the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas in Mexico, Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Insectarium | Espace pour la vie, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, Journey North, the Monarch Joint Venture, Profauna A.C. in Mexico, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.