The Dallas County Conservation Board’s annual monarch tagging program, a popular favorite in the board’s Nature on Call series, is scheduled for the weeks of Sept. 4, Sept. 11 and Sept 18 from 5-7:30 p.m. at the Kuehn Conservation Area near Redfield.
“Monarchs have created more conservation minded souls than possibly any other program the Dallas County Conservation Board has ever offered,” said Chris Adkins, environmental education coordinator with the county conservation department. “There is something magical about chasing a monarch through the tall grass prairies at Kuehn, catching them in a net, affixing a tag and releasing this migrating miracle on its journey to Mexico that changes one’s wild spirit.”
Visitors are invited to join Adkins and the Dallas County Conservation team and experience the monarchs’ passage through Iowa on their 5,000-mile migration to their winter homes in central Mexico.
The monarch is the only species of butterfly known to make a two-way seasonal migration that is similar to many birds.
“Unlike past years, we will not try to guess at the best date for this natural miracle,” Adkins said. “Instead, this year we will simply rejoice in the date that the monarchs’ migration moves through and contact our registered wild friends to join us at Kuehn.”
Anyone interested in participating in the tagging program can register by calling the Dallas County Conservation office at 515-465-3577. When the big push of migrating monarchs moves south through Dallas County, the conservation office will call registered participants and invite them to join in the tagging.
Monarch tagging is a popular educational project for students and nature enthusiasts. Data collected from the Dallas County Conservation Board’s annual event contributes to the tagging research studies of the Monarch Watch Project.
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