We await the day when technological advances will make it possible to track individual monarchs continuously.

Dr. Lincoln Brower in "Monarch Butterfly Orientation: Missing Pieces of a Magnificent Puzzle" (1996)

An Unbelievable Journey

And a transmitter to answer our most pressing questions

The Project Monarch Collaboration is a consortium of research organizations across North America and the Caribbean who have joined a groundbreaking effort to track monarch butterfly migration using cutting-edge radio transmitter technology. Building on successful pilot programs in 2023-2024, this collaboration seized on an opportunity to deploy cutting-edge Blū+ enabled transmitters at a large scale throughout North America to study monarch migration in an unprecedented level of detail. Ultimately, it is the goal of the collaboration to use the data obtained to inform monarch conservation efforts, generate high-impact scientific publications, and secure future funding opportunities for all participants.

In the beginning

A SIMPLE REQUEST

Is it possible to develop a transmitter light enough for a monarch to carry all the way to the wintering grounds, and potentially into the following spring?

An unlikely coincidence

COVID-19 induced innovation (2022)

Due to all the issues CTT faced with manufacturing during the pandemic, the decision to bring full manufacturing processes in-house resulted in the smallest possible solar panel, and the ability to innovate with some of the tiniest components in existence. The result?
The BlūMorpho

Leveraging Bluetooth to increase detections

Project Monarch is born (2023 & 2024)

Fist as a groundbreaking App funded and supported by the Cape May Point Arts and Science Center, which engaged over 3000 community scientists in the first months of launching...

The Revolution Will Be Televised (2024)

...then, in November of 2024, as a revolution to leverage billions of receivers worldwide: Motus stations, Terra stations, Project Monarch App users, and now most smartphones and other smart devices with both Location Services and Bluetooth enabled become passive receivers, allowing for unprecedented spatial and temporal tracking in near-real-time, all available in the Project Monarch App...

The end of the story is just the beginning

A continent-wide deployment

...but we would have to wait until spring of 2025, after an eye-opening deployment by Environment and Climate Change Canada of 30 Blū+ enabled BlūMorpho transmitters on Long Point, in Ontario, for Project Monarch to launch their most ambitious tagging effort by engaging dozens of partners across the range of the monarch butterfly to deploy transmitters in the Fall of 2025.

The Result?

A dream realized

In September and October of 2025, through the collaboration and coordination of over 20 partners across four countries, the team deployed over 400 Blū+ enabled BlūMorpho transmitters on migratory monarch butterflies. To-date these butterflies have been tracked thousands of miles from as far north as southern Ontario to Mexico and the Caribbean. And we've only just begun.