The Field Museum is recruiting citizen scientists to join the fight to save the monarch butterfly.
In the last two decades, the monarch population has declined by 80%, which has prompted scores of Chicagoans to plant milkweed — the monarch’s host plant — in their yards and other green spaces. But how effective are those efforts?
That’s what the Field’s Keller Science Action Center is attempting to quantify through a community science project.
Volunteer monitors, who can be residents of the city, its suburbs or northwest Indiana, will keep tabs on milkweed plants and patches, recording any monarch eggs, caterpillars and emergent butterflies. The goal of the project is to help determine the survivorship of monarch caterpillars in urban back yards.
The project kicked off in 2019 and is already underway in 2020, but there’s still time to participate. Interested volunteers can sign up for the upcoming training sessions on July 8, or July 11 for Spanish speakers.
Not able to take part in the project but still interested in learning more about how to monitor your milkweed? The Field has a video for that.