Scientists fear that as much as 80 percent of the monarch butterfly population may have been killed when a January storm struck the butterflies’ winter colonies in Mexico, according to Journey North, a citizen science project funded by Annenberg/CPB, a partnership of the Annenberg Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
As the butterflies migrate north this spring, people are asked to record monarch sightings for Journey North’s Monarch Migration Project at www.learner.org/jnorth. The site also offers resources for teachers. Registration is required for families or classrooms that want to become monarch lookouts, but it is free and can be completed online.
Butterfly reports assist analysis of how weather and other threats, both natural and human, affect butterflies. Journey North said that the monarch population is believed to be at its lowest in the 27 years the project has collected data.
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