Greener Village tagging monarch butterflies before migration
Lauren Bird | CBC News | Posted: August 26, 2015 1:01 AM | Last Updated: August 26, 2015
Butterflies will embark on a 5,000 kilometre migration to Mexico and southern United States.
Greener Village in Fredericton is getting its monarch butterflies ready for their 5,000 kilometre migration to Mexico and southern United States.
The organization released a handful of its butterflies Tuesday but not before sticking a tag to their wings so they can be tracked once they've reached their destination.
"This aids in research as right now there is an international initiative to protect the butterfly's migration," said Brandi Riddoch, the research coordinator at Greener Village.
Greener Village's monarch butterfly program started this year. Riddoch and others have raised the butterflies from eggs in captivity.
"Their survival rate in the wild is quite low. A female will lay about 400 eggs and out of those, 90 per cent will die," Riddoch said.
But of the 200 eggs Greener Village started with, 198 made it to the chrysalis phase.
Because of the resources it's developed, Greener Village has been named an official waystation for the monarch butterfly by monarchwatch.org, a program developed at the University of Kansas to raise awareness of the butterflies plight.