7 min read.
By Stu Mackenzie, Director of Strategic Assets, Birds Canada
Every fall, Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus) embark on an astonishing journey from Canada and the United States to overwintering forests high in the mountains of central Mexico. While the general ecology of this migration have been known for decades, the fine-scale paths taken by individual butterflies—how they navigate landscapes, interact with weather, and use stopover habitats—have remained largely hidden. This year, those details came into focus thanks to a hemispheric collaboration with deep roots at Long Point.
Birds Canada is proud to be part of Project Monarch, a continent-wide collaboration that, for the first time, has followed individual monarchs from across North America and the Caribbean all the way to their overwintering sites in Mexico in near real time. The project, recently featured in The New York Times, showcases what becomes possible when leading-edge technology meets international collaboration and long-standing conservation expertise.
At the heart of Birds Canada’s involvement are two pillars of migration science and leadership in conservation technology that maximize our strengths to drive effective conservation: the Long Point Bird Observatory (LPBO) and the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus).
Long Point: A 30+ Year Legacy of Monarch Monitoring
Monarch with BlūSeries Tag. Photo: Samuel Perfect.
Long before new technology existed, LPBO staff and volunteers were documenting Monarch Butterfly migration. For more than three decades, LPBO has conducted daily insect censuses throughout the fall migration season, tracking the number, timing, and behaviour of monarchs at Long Point. This work has created one of the longest-running standardized counts of monarchs in Canada, and unique datasets of its kind in the world.
Long Point, stretching 32 km into Lake Erie, forms a natural funnel, concentrating migrants that would otherwise be widely dispersed. That makes it an ideal place for Birds Canada and its partners to test emerging technologies, methods, and ideas related to migration ecology. Much of the early testing for Motus was completed at Long Point and hundreds of research on migration has occurred on Long Point.
LPBO’s facilities and expertise and the extensive existing Motus array make Long Point a perfect location to launch studies that may reveal monarch migration ecology including habitat use, and movements with unprecedented clarity.
Laying the Groundwork: Testing and Motus Upgrades
In 2024, Birds Canada worked with Dr. Greg Mitchell and Ana Diaz Bohórquez from Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC), with support from the Nature Conservancy of Canada (Dr. Aerin Jacob and Sam Knight), to trial new Motus technology at LPBO’s Tip Research Station.
The project tested solar-powered 60-milligram BluMorpho tags—developed by Motus technology partner Cellular Tracking Technologies (CTT). These tags are light enough for insects to safely carry, based on studies from US collaborators, Motus staff, and the research team.
Dr. Ana Diaz holding a monarch at Long Point. Photo: Samuel Perfect.
To support the trial, antennas and receivers on the Long Point Motus array were upgraded, making it one of the first locations in the world able to detect these new tags. Early tests focused on how monarchs used habitat and navigated on Long Point. They also showed that this technology—once thought impossible for insects—could be reliably carried by monarchs and used to collect movement data in the wild.
2025: Scaling Up Through Continental Collaboration
ECCC and University of Guelph staff and students at the Tip of Long Point. Photo: Samuel Perfect.
With proof of concept established, Long Point became a pivotal Canadian site in the continent-wide rollout of Project Monarch in 2025.
In early September, the team from ECCC, accompanied by graduate students Marianne Goulet (University of Guelph – working with Dr. Ryan Norris) and Lily Charles (University of Ottawa – working with Dr. Heather Kharouba) joined Birds Canada staff (LPBO and Motus) and volunteers at the Tip to conduct a follow up to 2024’s study, and deploy a first wave of 30 new enhanced BlūSeries+ tags. The addition of BlūSeries+ are a major advance for some applications: these devices can not only be detected by Motus receivers, but also by cell phons, but also by cell phones, and home-based Motus compatible Terra stations, dramatically expanding the detection possibilities across landscapes. The results started to pour in almost immediately from stations, and mobile Motus stations (e.g., cell phones) from fisherman on boats, cottagegoers on the beach, and communities around Lake Erie and beyond.
The tracks collected during this period captured monarchs leaving the Tip of Long Point, crossing Lake Erie, and continuing southwest across both rural and urban regions—patterns that had previously been inferred from sightings and weather patterns, but never visualized with such precision. Nearly all of this initial wave of monarchs rapidly crossed Lake Erie arriving in Erie, Pennsylvania, or farther west toward Cleveland, Ohio. One butterfly disappeared off the Tip of Long Point only to be detected on Pelee Island three days later.
Following on the success of this project, and similar initiatives at Cape May, New Jersey, CTT and the Cape May Point Arts & Science Center (CMPASC), monarch experts across North America rallied to deploy more than 500 tags across their range. This collaboration brought together more than 20 organizations across four countries. Data from tagged monarchs can be tracked through the Project Monarch app, and data will soon be integrated for public exploration through the Motus database. As a part of this effort, Birds Canada and collaborators coordinated a second, larger wave of deployments, releasing 25 tagged monarchs at both Long Point (The Tip, Old Cut and Birds Canada Headquarters), and near Point Pelee.
Reflecting on the first detections from Long Point, Greg Mitchell noted that “When the data started streaming in from our first deployment at Long Point, I knew it was a game-changer. The immediacy and impact of the results was astounding and made us all realize that we could start to truly understand how monarchs move through the landscape and respond to weather and navigational challenges they encounter across their entire migratory journey. Ultimately, this will help us understand how climate change may be impacting monarchs and provide an evidence base for how different habitats, e.g. protected areas and even gardens, are helping monarchs from Canada reach Mexico.” Greg also noted that “This work would have been very challenging without the support of Birds Canada and the Long Point Bird Observatory. Having like-minded and strong conservation partners is what made this project both possible and successful. It was truly a team effort.”
A Decade of Innovation in Motus Insect Tracking
This year’s success builds on almost a decade of innovation within the Motus community. Early experiments demonstrated that radio telemetry could be used on insects long before many believed it was feasible. More than 950 monarchs have been tracked using earlier Motus-compatible transmitters, including one butterfly tagged by the same ECCC research team that flew nearly 1,200 kilometres from southern Ontario to Kansas—the longest journey ever recorded for a tagged monarch prior to this year.
Motus collaborators have also experimented with nearly 100 darner dragonflies, including the migratory Common Green Darner. Although earlier technology had limitations, it revealed a wealth of new possibilities. With the integration of this new technology into Motus, Birds Canada and collaborators are excited to revisit butterfly and dragonfly tracking and expand insect migration science on small organisms even further.
A New Chapter for Motus Technology
BluMorpho tag. Photo: Kyle Shepard
As Stu Mackenzie, Birds Canada’s Director of Strategic Assets, shares, “For Birds Canada, this technology helps to complete a transformative trifecta for Motus —detecting animals and sharing data collected by broad-scale Motus infrastructure, home-based Motus stations, and community-sourced detections through cellular and IoT networks working together.
This project has truly fulfilled lifelong aspirations for this group of collaborators. The ability to track small wildlife like monarchs in real time has been astounding, and the potential for immediate and impactful conservation as a result is going to be rapidly apparent.”
Motus collaborators have also experimented with nearly 100 darner dragonflies, including the migratory Common Green Darner. Although earlier technology had limitations, it revealed a wealth of new possibilities. With the integration of this new technology into Motus, Birds Canada and collaborators are excited to revisit butterfly and dragonfly tracking and expand insect migration science on small organisms even further.
Why it Matters and What’s Next
Monarchs—and many migratory species—face mounting threats, including habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, and increasingly severe weather. Protecting migrants requires knowing where they travel, rest, and refuel. The routes revealed this year, from Long Point, Point Pelee, and all the way to central Mexico, give scientists and conservationists a richer understanding of the places that sustain monarchs through their journey.
By strengthening partnerships across borders and sharing data openly, Project Monarch demonstrates how collaborative conservation can raise the bar for research on birds, bats, insects, and other species that depend on healthy migration corridors.
Planning is already underway for expanded Motus stations across the hemisphere, along with new deployments of BlūSeries+ tags. Collaborators including Birds Canada are also exploring opportunities to track spring monarch movements and a range of studies aimed to conserve our smallest wildlife.
Project Monarch shows what becomes possible when the research community, innovation, and international collaboration intersect. We congratulate CTT and the Cape May Point Arts and Science Centre, and the collaboration in particular, on this marvelous achievement and contribution to the conservation science community. We’re honored to contribute to this hemispheric effort and excited for the discoveries yet to come.
