The Monarch Larva Monitoring Project turned 30 in 2025! The program officially started in 1996, although members of the University of Minnesota Monarch Lab monitored the first MLMP site in western Wisconsin for a few years before that, developing a protocol that could be replicated across the monarch breeding range.
Michelle Prysby, Liz Goerhing, Sonia Altizer, and Karen Oberhauser officially recorded the first MLMP data in 1996. In 1997, Michelle recruited volunteers to use the protocol, and 19 sites were monitored that year by Larry Brindza (VA), Dennis Ewert (WI), Sue Haines (ME), Susan Jamison (MI), Michael Lastufka (TX), Rod Murray (Ontario), Pete and Sanny Oberhauser (WI), Jean Orbison (WI), Mike Quinn (TX), Molly Schweinfurter (MN), Gail Steffy (PA), John Stiefel (WI), Carol Stoops (MN), Ray Sullivan (WI), Lisa Tewksbury (RI), and Sue Wait (FL). Note that Susan Jamison and Gayle Steffy are still monitoring, and Karen Oberhauser continues to monitor her parents’ (Pete and Sanny) site in Wisconsin.
In these 30 years, MLMP volunteers have monitored 4,961,418 milkweed plants! We’ll blow past 5 million in 2026. You’ve conducted 57,711 monitoring events, and observed 387,736 eggs, 68,827 first instars, 51,803 second instars, 36,525 third instars, 29,210 fourth instars, and 38,758 fifth instars.
Supporting volunteer training, website work, data management, communication with volunteers, and multiple database overhauls isn’t cheap, and we are grateful for the funders who have supported many aspects of the project.
The first external funding for the MLMP came from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation as a Joan DeWind award to Michelle Prysby in 1996. Outreach and scientific aspects of the project were supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (1998-2005, 2009-2014), as well as many grants administered by the Minnesota Department of Education to engage Minnesota teachers in monarch research and teaching (1997-2017). The US Forest Service-International Programs provided funds to support personnel at the University of Minnesota, Monarch Joint Venture, and UW-Madison Arboretum (who ran the program from 2008-2025), and the MJV continues to raise funds from additional sources to support the program.
Thirty-seven scientific publications have used MLMP data. Others have used data from the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Project, another Monarch Joint Venture project that uses MLMP protocols to measure monarch egg and larva densities, and adds more rigorous measurements of adult monarch, milkweed, and nectar plant density.
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