The bright colors and extraordinary migration habits of monarch butterflies have made them one of our most beloved insects. Their populations have fallen drastically in recent decades and in July 2022 they were classified as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the world’s most comprehensive scientific authority on the status of species. Learn about monarch migration, their overwintering biology, and the critical need for their global conservation from Karen Oberhauser, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin who has studied monarchs for over 35 years. Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Green Bay Trail.

About the presenter: Dr. Karen Oberhauser holds a bachelor of arts degree in biology from Harvard College, a bachelor of science degree in natural science education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D in ecology and behavioral biology from the University of Minnesota. She is an adjunct professor in the Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology Department and is the former director of the Monarch Lab at the University of Minnesota. She has been the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum since 2017. In 2013, she was named a Champion of Change for Citizen Science by the White House. In addition to authoring many publications in scholarly journals, she is a co-editor for two books published by Cornell Press: The Monarch Butterfly: Biology and Conservation and Monarchs in a Changing World: Biology and Conservation of an Iconic Butterfly.

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