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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.
Explore stations throughout the Zoo highlighting our commitment to pollinator conservation and learn how you can help protect these important species in your own community.
Butterfly costumes are encouraged!
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.
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!
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. You can plant native flowers and pollinator-friendly plants in your yard or local green space. Consider converting to chemical-free gardening to keep your flowers healthy and safe for our monarch butterfly friends!
When the butterflies show up, snap a picture and use community science apps like iNaturalist and Seek to record and share your sightings.
Join us at Monarch Festival to learn more!
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