“Mission Monarch complete,” I said, grinning as I emerged from the forest of Central Penjajawoc Preserve in Bangor. Sweaty and covered with thorn scratches, I’d just spent a couple of hours searching the leaves of milkweed plants for monarch caterpillars.
I found seven – and each one was important.
Monarchs have seen a sharp population decline in recent years. Right now — July 25 through Aug. 3 — is the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz, a time when nature lovers all over the world search for monarch butterflies and caterpillars and report their observations to participating community science programs: iNaturalist, Journey North, Monarch Larva Monitoring Project and Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper.
I chose iNaturalist because I already have the app on my phone, which is free to download. On the app, you can upload photos of nature observations and get help from experts to identify what you’ve found.
In the case of monarch caterpillars, I didn’t need help with identification. They’re distinctive, with yellow, black and white stripes circling their plump, smooth bodies. Pair that with the fact that they’re pretty much always found munching on milkweed and it’s pretty hard to misidentify them.
Maine is home to four native species of milkweed that host the monarch butterfly through its lifecycle, from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. These tall plants grow best in well-drained sunny areas, such as meadows.
Central Penjajawoc Preserve, a 182-acre property owned and managed by the Bangor Land Trust, features several clusters of milkweed plants that you can visit on the aptly named Milkweed Trail. Marked with tall white flags, the trail travels through a grassland to the edge of the Penjajawoc Marsh, passing milkweed along the way.
If you want to check it out, I suggest wearing pants because some of the grassland plants have thorns, and I learned this the hard way in shorts. Pants tucked into socks will also help you avoid being bitten by ticks. I found one trying to lodge itself headfirst into my ankle.
When I decided to participate in Monarch Blitz, I searched online for trails, gardens and parks in the Bangor area that featured milkweed, and I was a little disappointed. After a lot of digging, I came up with the Central Penjajawoc Preserve, which was great. But the search results – or lack of them – indicated to me a need for more conserved areas that contain milkweed.
Monarchs – one of our largest, most iconic butterfly species – need help. According to a 2024 species status assessment by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the probability that eastern monarchs (the kind Maine has) will go extinct by 2080 ranges from 56 percent to 74 percent. And the monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains are in even more danger, with their 2080 extinction probability greater than 95 percent.
Why is this? Biologists think it’s due to loss of habitat, exposure to insecticides and the effects of climate change.
We’ve been seeing the trend for years. The eastern population has declined more than 80 percent since the 1990s, according to The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Ask any gardener in Maine. They’re seeing monarchs less and less.
Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. At least people care and are trying to make a difference. The eighth year of Monarch Blitz in 2024 saw record-breaking participation, with more than double the people of the previous year reporting 16,000 monarch sightings and 68,000 milkweed plants during the 10-day event.
Another upside of the situation is that people can easily help monarchs in their own backyards by forgoing pesticides and planting milkweed. When so many conservation issues seem daunting to the average person, the chance to make even a small difference is a relief.
For this reason, pollinator gardens – in which the plant species are selected for attracting and feeding butterflies, bees and other pollinators – have grown in popularity in recent years. During my recent quest to find monarchs, I visited the Green Lake Fish Hatchery in Ellsworth, where a beautiful pollinator garden is located right outside the hatchery offices.
Sadly, I didn’t find any monarch caterpillars or butterflies in the garden that day, though I did watch a variety of other insects feeding on the milkweed and blossoms. Bumblebees, leaf-footed bugs, milkweed leaf beetles, milkweed tussock moth caterpillars, land snails, damselflies – all sorts of little creatures were living among the flowers.
I was resigned to leave the hatchery without having seen any evidence of monarchs when I noticed some milkweed growing along the hatchery road. Not particularly hopeful, I started scanning the leaves and all of the sudden, there it was: a plump, striped monarch caterpillar.
I logged the find on iNaturalist and continued on my way.
Monarch caterpillars are cool, but the butterflies are downright majestic. With a wingspan reaching 4 inches, they’re among our largest butterflies in Maine, and most people know what they look like: orange with a web of black lines and white dots.
I saw just one monarch butterfly while visiting Central Penjajawoc Preserve and ran halfway across a field before giving up the chase. Bummer.
Fortunately, two days later while guiding clients from New Jersey on a nature walk around Little Long Pond on Mount Desert Island, we discovered a milkweed patch where about a dozen monarch butterflies fluttered about, landing on flowers and being generally magical.
If I hadn’t stumbled upon those butterflies, I would have headed down the road to Charlotte Rhodes Butterfly Park in Southwest Harbor, where you can usually spot monarchs this time of year. I’m sure those butterflies are well-documented, but it’s a wonderful experience to sit amongst the flowerbeds and photograph them.
One thing I’ve taken away from participating in the Monarch Blitz is the importance of native plants. In addition to monarch caterpillars, I saw so many different insects munching on milkweed – plus jumping spiders using the tall plants as vantage points for pouncing on prey.
At my home in the woods, my backyard struggles to grow grass. It looks terrible. So I think I’ll plant some milkweed and see how it grows. That seems like a better use of the space.
