Monarchs are on the move and heading through southeast Kansas.
“We’re part of their annual migration pattern,” explained Randy Rasa, naturalist and trail steward for Thrive Allen County.
And what a migration it is, with millions of tiny but regal insects traveling upwards of 80 miles a day on their over 1,500 mile round-trip journey from Mexico, Florida and California up through the U.S. and back again.
In fact, monarchs are the only insects with two-way migratory patterns, and it actually takes four generations to complete the full cycle.
While traveling through Kansas and elsewhere, monarchs attune themselves to temperatures, wind patterns and ultraviolet light, and are always on the lookout for life-sustaining nectar.
They must also find milkweed plants in order to complete their incredible life-cycles, metamorphosing from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to adult.
Incredibly, only about 10% of the eggs and caterpillars survive to adulthood.
There are five kinds of milkweed plants one can find on the Lehigh-Portland trails system, explained Rasa, including green antelope horn, common, swamp, whorled and green comet.
To identify them, Rasa recommended the digital app iNaturalist, which allows you to take and compare photos of insects, plants and more.
Note that all varieties of milkweed are poisonous, which in turn makes the bodies of monarchs toxic to predators.
AS MILKWEED is essential for the survival of monarch butterflies, strategic planting is key to conservation efforts, especially since, Rasa notes, numbers have been increasingly declining in recent years.
This is one additional benefit of prairie restoration efforts on the Lehigh trail system, but you can obtain your own milkweed seeds online for free, for instance, through monarchwatch.org, an informational site connected to the University of Kansas.
Of course, you can also simply gather seeds in the wild.
Regarding the specifics of this year’s migration, Chip Taylor, a professor at KU for almost 60 years, predicts this season’s movement will happen quickly, and shouldn’t be a repeat of last year’s migration, which was the latest in 28 years due to higher temperatures.
Since their fragile bodies are so affected by temperature changes, this also suggests that monarchs are especially susceptible to climate change.
