Monarch butterflies are on the move in Texas right now, heading south on their long journey toward wintering grounds in central Mexico. Texas Parks & Wildlife flagged the migration Thursday, asking Texans to keep an eye out for the orange-and-black travelers passing through the state.
The agency's post, shared from a photo taken at Abilene State Park, noted plainly that monarch butterflies are migrating through Texas and invited the public to track sightings and learn how to help the butterflies along their route, according to Texas Parks & Wildlife
. The timing lines up with what entomologists have long documented: monarchs occur throughout Texas during the fall migration, according to texasento.net, as the insects funnel through the state on their way south.
Monarchs east of the Rocky Mountains pass over Texas en route to Mexico. The fall migration typically runs from September through November, per Monarch Watch, though the coastal migration tends to lag behind the pattern seen in the Texas interior, texasento.net notes. Southerly winds can slow migration, while northerly winds can help move monarchs south.
Thousands Already Passing Through the Panhandle
Up in the Texas Panhandle, the migration has already hit its stride. Thousands of monarch butterflies reached the region as their migration season peaked earlier this month, according to NewsChannel 10. The station reported that the Amarillo area is seeing an unusually large wave compared with recent years, with one observer saying it's been quite a few years since the region has seen a heavy migration like this one.
Further north, Journey North logged a roost of several hundred monarchs clustered in hackberry and native elm trees along Wolf Creek in Lipscomb, Texas, on Sept. 22. That early roost offered one of the first concrete signs this fall that the southbound wave was building before it reached the rest of the state.
Abilene Sees Early Signs of the Season
Closer to the Big Country region, monarchs are beginning to show up across Abilene as migration season gets underway, the station notes. The Abilene Zoo has responded by building a monarch waystation designed to provide food and habitat for the passing butterflies, with an emphasis on milkweed, the plant monarch caterpillars depend on.
How far these butterflies still have to travel depends on which account you read. AccuWeather describes the southbound journey as one that can stretch up to 3,000 miles, while NewsChannel 10 characterizes the monarchs' trip as a 2,000-mile migration that brings them into parts of Texas in late September. Either way, AccuWeather notes the migration generally begins in August across southern Canada and the northern United States before shifting south through September and October, reaching the Gulf Coast in October with many eastern monarchs arriving in central Mexico from late October into November.
A Rebound in the Overwintering Grounds
The uptick in Texas sightings comes against the backdrop of a notable recovery in the eastern monarch population's overwintering footprint in Mexico. Monarchs occupied 2.93 hectares of forest there in December 2025, up from 1.79 hectares the prior December, a 64% increase, according to Monarch Butterfly Fund. That 2.93-hectare figure also sits slightly above the 10-year average of 2.81 hectares, the group reports, and marks a climb from an extremely low 0.9 hectares recorded during the winter of 2023–2024.
For Texans hoping to track the migration themselves, migration maps offer a way to follow the fall movement. Texas Parks & Wildlife's own post pointed followers toward migration maps and resources for helping monarchs along their journey, part of an effort that stretches from backyard gardens in Abilene to open prairie in the Panhandle as the orange wave continues its push toward Mexico.
