Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium

Iowa’s role is vital to the monarch butterfly’s recovery! The Iowa Monarch Conservation Strategy is now available to guide efforts. Read a summary of the strategy, and here are five actions you can take.

Read the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium's Strategic Goals.

Monarch Sightings

Click on the map on the right to see the progress of monarchs migrating north from Mexico.

Learning About Iowa Monarchs

We want our recommendations for monarch habitat improvement to be scientifically sound. Research projects in summer 2017 include:

• efforts to evaluate nine species of milkweed on plots at Iowa State University research farms
• a project to discover optimal monarch breeding, forage and roosting habitat characteristics in Iowa's patchy landscape and
• a survey of milkweed species and monarch occurrence, plant density, and population to establish baseline data.