Mendota Heights-Area Volunteers Wrap Up Butterfly Monitoring Season in Lilydale Regional Park

Each Tuesday afternoon this summer volunteers at Lilydale Regional Park became citizen scientists. Their mission: record observations about the monarch larva population on milkweed plants in the park as part of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (MLMP) for the University of Minnesota.

The project was started by Karen Oberhauser, professor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation at the University. MLMP enlists volunteers to reach more populations and educate participants about monarchs and their habitat.

The goal is to better understand monarch population variations and the factors contributing to them. Researchers are able to use this data to learn about monarch biology, migration patterns and what factors might cause population variation in different areas of the country.

Grit Youngquist, a member of the Friends of Lilydale Park, started the Lilydale leg of the project in 2004 at the suggestion of a neighbor. It made sense for the Friends, a nonprofit group focusing on natural park preservation, to offer this type of activity, she said.

Youngquist signed up for the three-day training workshop necessary to start a new chapter of the project, and the rest came together thanks to the interest of community members.

 “We’ve had wonderful volunteers on site each summer,” said Youngquist, who is the primary contact for people interesting in becoming involved.

 “I like the fact that when I go out to look for a monarch I end up seeing and hearing so many other amazing things,” said Adele Binning, one of the original volunteers for the project.

Binning said she thought it would be interesting and has come to love taking an hour-and-a-half to examine the natural world.

In the first year the project drew four or five volunteers each session, usually the same people, but since then it has grown outward.

“You spread the word and you also spread the experience out,”  Binning said. She now leads sessions about once a month.

What They Find

On an average Tuesday volunteers check between one and 200 milkweed plants. While the data varies based on the year, one might find anywhere from zero to 50 monarch eggs.

The past few summers the number of eggs has dropped, and volunteers are more likely to find between zero and 10 in one session. Finding larva at different “instars,” or stages of development, is less common. A scientist might also see one or two larva in instar per session.