2023 – Thanks to funding from the PEI Wildlife Conservation Fund, we joined Monarch Watch. This is an organization that focuses on monarch butterfly conservation in North America. This summer, we registered two monarch waystations at our Roseberry Pond office and the Gillis Lodge pollinator garden. Monarch waystations are areas that have the resources (ex. swamp milkweed) monarchs need to survive. We raised and tagged a total of 23 monarch caterpillars at our office. The tags were small, numbered stickers placed on the discal scale, a special spot on the butterfly’s wing. All of our butterflies were released and have since migrated south. Monarch Watch has volunteers in the areas monarchs are known to overwinter in (Mexico). These volunteers go out and record any tagged monarchs they find. All the data gets submitted to the Monarch Watch website (monarchwatch.org).