Recent News
More than a dozen member organizations of the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium are representing Iowa at an event hosted by Monarch Joint Venture and the Midwest Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies in Nebraska City, NE.
The Iowa Monarch Conservation Strategy now includes best management practices to guide Iowans in helping to increase monarch butterfly habitat.
Jacob Handel is an undergraduate research assistant with the ISU monarch butterfly research team. Handel, a native of Sycamore, Illinois, is an active member of the ISU Environmental Science Club and the ISU Environmental Education Club. He joined the monarch team in 2018.
Monarch Conservation
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.