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Monarch Conservation Webinar Series

Monarch Conservation Webinar Series

Stay connected with the latest monarch conservation topics by attending our free monthly webinars. This series is a unique opportunity to hear from experts across various interdisciplinary fields related to monarchs, other pollinators, their habitats, and the threats and pressures that make conservation urgent. Bring your questions and get ready to discover how you can get involved to protect monarchs.

All webinars are one hour long and occur at 1:00 PM Central Time (2:00 PM EST l 12:00 PM MST l 11:00 AM PST)

Please note that scheduled webinars are subject to change. Please reach out to learn@monarchjointventure.org with questions. 

All past webinars are available to view in our webinar archive

2024 Webinars

Register for all 2024 Monarch Butterfly Conservation Webinars here

  • January 23: Community Engagement in Monarch Conservation through the Arts 
    • Crochet and Conservation presented by Yesenia Juarez, Fiber artist and founder of Little Village Busy Bees: How do you get the public excited about Monarch conservation? You make it fun!
    • Monarch Caterpillars into Butterflies, Children into Scientists, & Parents into Participants! presented by Carolina Benitez, El Valor Education Manager and Veronica Nieto, El Valor Health, Nutrition, and Safety Manager: The monarch is used in classrooms and home-based programs, as well as a way to engage parents in their child’s education and as a way to promote community engagement and nature conservation in communities of Chicago. Through this tool, we have successfully increased parental participation and improved science instruction for both Early Head Start and Head Start, while assisting the US Forest Service with its conservation mission. This project has implications for diverse audiences and has served as a way to encourage vocabulary acquisition, foster understanding of geography, spatial reasoning, stimulate observation, and investigation. Participants will learn how El Valor has utilized and encouraged parents to explore nature in urban communities while supporting their child’s learning and awareness of nature conservation through the Monarch Butterfly.
  • February 27: Solar Synergy: delivering multiple environmental benefits presented by Pete Berthelson, The Bee and Butterfly Habitat Fund
    • Learn how the new Solar Synergy program works with utility-scale solar projects across the country to strategically design, deliver, and document pollinator health & habitat benefits, carbon sequestrations gains, and produce great vegetative cover outcomes.
  • March 26: Monarchs 101: Back to Basics presented by Katie-Lyn Bunney, Monarch Joint Venture
    • Join MJV's Education Manager for a very basic, but thorough, introduction to monarch biology and ecology. If you're wanting to learn more, but don't know where to start, this webinar is for you! Or perhaps you just want to refresh your knowledge. Katie-Lyn will cover a little bit of everything: life cycle, migration, population pressures, milkweed ID and habitat needs.
  • April 23: Tri-National Monarch Butterfly Conservation presented by Dr. Greg Mitchell, Mara Koenig, Adriana Valera
    • Monarch butterfly conservation in Canada presented by Dr. Greg Mitchell, Environment and Climate Change Canada: Dr. Mitchell will discuss the current listing status of monarch butterflies in Canada as well as monitoring, research, and stewardship activities specifically carried out or supported at the federal level. Dr. Mitchell will also touch on the listing process for species at risk in Canada, specifically as it relates to the monarch butterfly.
    • U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Center for Pollinator Conservation Update presented by Mara Koenig, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Center for Pollinator Conservation: Prioritizing actions for conserving pollinators can be difficult, and communicating it can be even more so. The term 'pollinator' itself implies thousands of different species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Center for Pollinator Conservation recognizes there is overlap. The Center wants to work as a collective community on shared efforts that can make it much simpler and expand efforts to move forward.
    • Monitoring the Overwinter Colonies, Conservation of Monarchs in Mexico presented by Adriana Valera of WWF Mexico: History of Monarch butterfly conservation in Mexico since the discovery of the overwintering sites to the conservation activities WWF is developing in the present.
  • May 21: Container Gardening with Keystone Plants presented by Krista De Cooke, Homegrown National Park
    • In this presentation, Krista De Cooke will explore container gardening as a potent strategy to combat biodiversity loss. Attendees will learn how to cultivate keystone plants tailored to their growing conditions and suitable for small spaces, using ecoregions as a guide for plant selection. Krista will showcase plant species that will be suitable for level II ecoregions across the United States and Canada, highlighting their potential to support native biodiversity and serve as crucial refueling stops for pollinators. She will also emphasize the concept of Keystone Plants, species that form the backbone of local ecosystems by providing essential insect food. By incorporating these keystone plants, attendees will be able to actively contribute to the restoration of native biodiversity and address the urgent issue of ecosystem collapse. Joining this presentation will allow participants to make a meaningful impact on biodiversity regeneration, one container at a time.
  • June 25: Milkweed and Floral Resource Availability for Monarchs in the US: 8 Years of Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program Data presented by Jennifer Thieme & Sarah Gomes, Monarch Joint Venture
    • Be among the first to discover what 8 years of Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program data can tell us about monarch habitat! MJV staff will share the findings from a variety of studies that utilize the IMMP to survey monarchs and their habitat. They'll summarize habitat metrics across over a thousand sites, covering much of the monarch's breeding range, and explore variation in milkweed density and floral resource availability across geographic regions and land uses. Then take a more focused dive into California, where MJV teams have surveyed several Bureau of Land Management sites for monarchs and milkweed.
  • July 23: TBD presented by Hillary Sardinas, California Association of Resource Conservation Districts
  • August 27: Climate and Pollinator Initiatives at the USDA presented by Izzy Hill, USDA Pollinator Coordinator
    • USDA has over 20 offices and 14 research labs working on pollinator initiatives, with climate being a top environmental stress of concern. This presentation will provide an overview of policy, programmatic, and research efforts happening across the Department and how they aim to help support long-term pollinator health.
  • September 24: Tracking Shifts in Food Availability for Monarchs and Other Pollinators presented by Erin Posthumus, USA National Phenology Network
    • Monarchs depend on a diverse suite of host plants along their migration path. Knowledge of when and where plants are leafing and flowering, and how climate change is shifting the timing, is critical for understanding availability of food resources. In this presentation I will describe how the USA National Phenology Network engages volunteer and professional scientists in collecting data on presence and intensity of leafing and flowering with simple yet scientifically rigorous phenology protocols. I’ll also describe our recent efforts to establish climate drivers to flowering and seed timing to make predictions of how this timing will shift under future climate conditions.
  • October 22: Monarchs and the Military: MJV Collaboration on Public Lands presented by TBD
  • November 19: AZA SAFE Monarch: Engagement and Conservation in Zoo and Aquariums presented by Travis Kurtz, Lauren Barczak, and Jen Klotz
    • I’m Holding out for a (habitat) Hero presented by Travis Kurtz, John Ball Zoo: This presentation will talk about using native plant giveaways as a replicable model for augmenting urban pollinator habitat, and as a gateway to engaging our local communities in pollinator conservation.
    • Small but Mighty: Creating Change for Monarchs in Small Zoos and Aquariums presented by Lauren Barczak and Jen Klotz, Brandywine Zoo: Even the smallest institutions can inspire monumental conservation action for monarchs through community engagement! This presentation will discuss models for events and programs that institutions of any size can utilize, highlighting the Brandywine Zoo’s successful Mighty Monarch Day event, participation in Symbolic Migration, citizen science efforts, and more!
  • December 17: An Assessment of Native Seed Needs and the Capacity for Their Supply presented by Kay Havens, Chicago Botanic Garden
    • A 2023 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine says the insufficient supply of seeds from native plants is a major barrier to ecological restoration and other revegetation projects across the United States. The report calls for concerted action to build a more robust native seed supply and industry, especially as climate change increases the possibility of extreme weather events and wildfires that often damage natural areas. We will review findings and recommendations from the report, as well as progress that has been made since the report release.

2023 Webinars