Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden®

Home of the world famous hippo Fiona. Family friendly Zoo committed to inspiring visitors with wildlife and saving species.

Monarch Festival

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden’s Monarch Festival will celebrate these most beautiful and beloved pollinators. A fun and educational event for the entire family.

The Monarch Festival will shed light on the Zoo’s leadership and commitment to pollinator conservation in the region and all aspects of the Zoo’s Pollen Nation program and will include stations set up at Vine Street Village and a migration down to the Butterfly Garden. Butterfly costumes are encouraged for the fun event!

Play it SAFE: How You Can Protect Monarchs

To celebrate the start of the fall migration for monarch butterflies, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) SAFE North American Monarch program is launching our Play it SAFE campaign. Learn about actions individuals and communities around North America can take to keep monarchs SAFE and support this iconic species. The SAFE Monarch program needs your help to keep monarchs safe throughout their migration!

Unfortunately, the migratory populations of monarch butterflies have experienced dramatic declines over recent decades. Eastern overwintering populations have decreased by 80% and Western populations have decreased by as much as 99%. We’re asking you to Play it SAFE this fall and keep monarchs in mind.

We need your help to bolster the habitats for monarch butterflies in order to recover and sustain these butterflies’ populations. By planting native, pollinator-friendly gardens in backyards, communities, cities, and farmlands, we will create a conservation corridor between Canada and Mexico for both populations. By protecting monarchs, we are also protecting the health and well-being of the environment, wildlife and communities that live alongside them. People are key to saving species; together we can find solutions that benefit people and wildlife.

How you can help – Actions to Play it SAFE

Everyone can help keep monarchs SAFE. Every action counts, even simple ones, like planting, observing, and sharing. This fall, the Play it SAFE campaign focuses on 6 key actions:

  1. Feed the migration by planting native flowering plants
  2. Keep caterpillars and butterflies healthy by planting native milkweed instead of tropical milkweed
  3. Plant monarch-SAFE plants that feed the migration, instead of plants poisoned with pesticides
  4. Cut any tropical milkweed down to the ground in mid-to-late October to keep monarchs safe from disease, and keep it cut down until spring
  5. Enjoy watching wild monarchs instead of rearing them indoors
  6. Share my monarch sightings with community scientists like Journey North

There are many ways to participate in Citizen Science opportunities!

Share what you find on social media with #PlayitSAFE #SAFEMonarchs #FeedTheMigration #SavingSpecies #SAFEMonarchNetwork!

More About Monarchs

The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) is an iconic and widespread brush-footed butterfly. It is one of the most recognizable insects in the world with its beautifully patterned orange, black, and white wings. Monarch butterflies are nectar generalists as adults and their larvae feed on milkweeds (Asclepias spp. and closely related species). To feed the migration, we need both flowers full of nectar and milkweed to support monarchs throughout their life stages.

The range of each monarch population expands and contracts seasonally. Each fall, a single generation will migrate to the overwintering grounds (coastal California and Baja California, Mexico for the Western population and the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico for the Eastern population). The insects survive the winter huddled together as adults in high-density aggregations. An individual butterfly may travel over 3,000 miles as part of the eastern population migration, making it one of the longest insect migrations in the world. In the spring, the populations begin to expand northward and eastward over multiple generations until their northernmost limit is reached in southern Canada.

Major threats to North American monarchs causing the steep declines in both the Eastern and Western populations are:

  • Habitat loss
  • Pesticides
  • Climate change
  • Disease, intensified through year-round tropical milkweed availability and captive rearing in warmer regions
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