By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Chip Taylor began the Monarch Watch program at the University of Kansas in 1992. That fall, Pam Martin helped bring the tagging program to Quivira National Wildlife Refuge. Over the past decade, she's made the Butterfly Festival one of the premiere events at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center with more than 800 attendees in 2019. The festival returns Saturday, Sept. 23 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Martin said the festival serves the scientific purpose of tracking monarchs during their 3,000-mile migration from Canada to Mexico.
"We'll have the tagging as we always do, and we'll have nets for everybody," she said. "There will be tagging leaders and they'll have orange vests on, that people can take the butterflies they catch to them and they'll tag."
The idea behind the tagging program is to determine how the monarchs migrate, the size of their roosts in Mexico, and the butterfly's mortality rates. Martin has been helping track the monarchs for more than three decades and has seen a noticeable change in that time.
"I have memories of being in fields of monarchs and you could hear their wings; just thousands, tens of thousands," she said. "Since that time, it's just decreased and decreased as many animals have in numbers."
Along with tagging, this year's festival will include three "Butterfly Magic" performances from Steve Craig and Amy Short as "The Instars." Weather permitting, there will also be a beehive demonstration in the insect zoo, that also features giant walking stick insects, scorpions, and more. Kids can take home their own pom-pom caterpillar magnets from the craft station. Reservations to the event are not required.
For more information contact KWEC at 1-877-243-9268 or visit: wetlandscenter.fhsu.edu.