Dozens of monarch butterflies took flight over Heritage Farm's outdoor market in Brunswick, Ohio, on Sunday as children counted to three and let go of the orange-and-black insects, sending them on the first leg of a journey of more than 2,000 miles to Mexico. Enthusiasts gathered at noon around aquarium-like boxes filled with caterpillars and chrysalises, watching butterflies emerge and, in some cases, fly quickly out of sight the moment they were released.
The annual tagging and release event, held at Heritage Farm's weekly Sunday market, paired hands-on science with old-fashioned outdoor fun, according to Cleveland.com. Volunteers Alisa Gerbec and Sandy Barczyz, who participate in a program to tag and track monarch butterflies, collected the monarchs themselves and displayed the boxes of caterpillars and chrysalises for visitors to examine up close. Each butterfly released carries a tiny tracking number affixed to its wing, a method Monarch Watch has used since the program's 1992 founding at the University of Kansas by entomologist Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor. The weatherproof circular stickers are applied to the discal cell on the underside of a hind wing without affecting flight, and the organization has coordinated tagging of more than 3 million monarchs across North America since it began.
Kids Get Hands-On With a Fragile Life Cycle
Isabel Cline and Natalie Cline looked over the caterpillars and a chrysalis on display, part of a life cycle that begins when female butterflies lay pinhead-sized eggs on milkweed leaves. Those eggs hatch into caterpillars, which feed on milkweed for about two weeks before entering the chrysalis stage and emerging as full-grown butterflies, per the same account. Heritage Farm has a large amount of milkweed on-site, which serves as the sole food source butterflies need at every stage before their wings develop.
Gerbec handed a tagged butterfly to each child who wanted the experience of holding one before letting go. London Hreha was startled by the speed and power of a butterfly leaving her hand, while Tela Ashworth watched a butterfly fly toward Gerbec before it climbed out of sight. Gerbec has personally received five certificates over the years, which volunteers earn when someone later spots one of their tagged butterflies elsewhere along the migration route.
Why Millions of Monarchs Fly to the Same Mexican Forests
The monarchs released at Heritage Farm belong to what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service describes as a distinct “super-generation” that enters reproductive diapause and can live up to nine months, compared with just two to five weeks for monarchs born in summer. That long-lived generation is the one that completes the multi-thousand-mile flight to central Mexico each fall and begins the return trip north in spring. Researchers with Monarch Watch have pushed the science further in recent years, deploying more than 600 solar-powered BlūMorpho radio transmitters during the 2025-2026 season in partnership with Cellular Tracking Technologies, recording individual butterflies covering more than 300 miles within days during spring migration.
The population these Brunswick monarchs are joining has seen encouraging news this year, according to the World Wildlife Fund. Eastern migratory monarchs occupied overwintering forest in central Mexico during the 2025-2026 winter. The insects cluster densely on tree branches through the winter months.
A Species Still Waiting on Federal Protection
That single-year rebound sits against a much steeper long-term decline. Eastern monarch populations have dropped by roughly 80 percent over the past two decades due to habitat degradation, extreme weather, and the loss of native milkweed across the Midwest, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The decline has continued over time. In December 2024, the agency proposed listing the monarch as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, but federal decision-making stalled in late 2025, pushing any final ruling to late 2026 at the earliest, according to the Xerces Society. The proposed rule includes a section 4(d) provision.
Ohio has its own piece of the puzzle. Conservation efforts are one small piece of a much larger volunteer network, including Monarch Watch's Monarch Waystation program.
Groups that spot a tagged butterfly can report it back to Monarch Watch, and the sighting earns the tagger a certificate — the same recognition Gerbec has collected five times over. For the kids counting down at Heritage Farm on Sunday, the release marked a small, hands-on entry point into a migration and a conservation effort that stretches all the way to the forests of central Mexico.
