Watch the 2025 webinar to discover how our team and partners are working together to monitor and conserve monarchs.
Monarch research and conservation across military lands
about the program
On a bustling military base, a flash of orange and black drifts across the sky: a monarch butterfly. These iconic pollinators are vital indicators of ecosystem health, and our work helps ensure their survival.
Since 2022, Environment for the Americas has brought its expertise in migratory species to monarchs, launching an internship program across 30+ military installations in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service International Programs and the Department of Defense’s Legacy Resource Management Program.
Veterans, military spouses, and dependents gain hands-on experience studying monarch populations, assessing habitats, and contributing critical data to guide conservation. Their efforts help us understand how monarchs use military lands while supporting career development in the natural resources.
Partnering installations
Monarch monitoring across military lands: In 2024, we surveyed 30+ installations (gray pins). In 2025, efforts were concentrated on 14 sites in California, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico (blue pins).
What We Do
Our interns conduct standardized surveys to observe monarchs throughout the breeding and migratory seasons, helping document monarch activity at each installation.
We collect detailed data on milkweed, nectar availability, vegetation composition, and other habitat characteristics using standardized surveys, including Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program (IMMP) protocols. These assessments strengthen our baseline understanding of the resources monarchs rely on across military installations.
We contribute to national migration research through two complementary tagging efforts. Using sticker tags from Monarch Watch, interns help track monarch migration as part of a long-running citizen science program.
This year, we also participated in Project Monarch, deploying BluMorpho radio tags in a first-of-its-kind collaborative study across multiple partner organizations. Together, these efforts provide unprecedented insight into monarch movement, survival, and migratory behavior.
Interns conduct standardized surveys to track monarch abundance, behavior, and distribution. They also collect biometric data, including wing measurements, weight, and parasite (OE) loads, helping assess overall butterfly health and fitness across sites.
Working alongside the Monarch Joint Venture, the Xerces Society, and other partners, we contribute to nationwide efforts to better understand monarch ecology and improve habitat management.
In California, we take part in the Western Monarch Counts at Camp Pendleton, Vandenberg Space Force Base, and Cap San Luis Obispo to help estimate annual monarch overwintering populations.
Interns work side by side with natural resource managers and DoD biologists, including DoD-embedded U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff, gaining hands-on experience while providing support in monitoring monarchs and document habitat conditions that directly inform conservation efforts.
Interested In Partnering with Us? Reach Out!
Military installations can join our monarch monitoring efforts, and volunteers can support research and education programs. Share your information below to inquire on how you can participate.
Internship experience
Our internship provides hands-on experience for participants, offering training in:
- Survey techniques, plant identification, and ecological field methods
- Data collection and analysis
- Webinars and professional development led by biologists, conservation experts, and career panelists
Interns join a multi-state network, connecting with peers at other installations, sharing findings, and learning from a collaborative group of scientists and natural resource professionals.
This program uniquely links the military community to conservation work, creating pathways into environmental science while directly supporting monarch monitoring and habitat protection on Department of Defense lands. Veterans, military spouses, and dependents are encouraged to apply.
Exciting news! We are now registered as an official SkillBridge DOD provider. We are excited to welcome transitioning service members into our program.
For questions or to learn more, email internships@environmentamericas.org.
What our interns are saying...
I developed important skills dealing with a variety of wildlife, teaching the public and peer, and communicating with other scientists!
Dylan Garibaldi2025 Intern at Joint Base San Antonio 
My experience with the Monarch Program at Fort Hood-AIM was truly remarkable, thanks to the intelligent and supportive individuals who continually mentored and guided me throughout my internship.
Rovina Facey2025 Intern at Fort Hood
I was originally attending school for meteorology. After becoming a military spouse and moving to Texas, I switched my career path to environmental science and discovered EFTA. It made me realize I love doing work outdoors rather than in an office setting, and working to protect and advocate for creatures and systems that can’t always advocate for themselves.
Olivia Doutt2025 Intern at Dyess AFB
This experience has been extremely rewarding in providing me with field experience as well as support and resources to follow my passions. I’m grateful to have experienced nature up close and collect data needed to better protect our pollinators and improve habitats.
Micah Lester2024 Travel Intern in OK, OH, IN
I see a value in what we are doing because of the data we are collecting, but also because we are a network of people working towards something. This project shows that so many care about something palm sized like a butterfly.
Shelby DiQuirico2024 Intern at Camp Roberts, Camp SLO, and Vandenberg
Understanding the mysteries of monarchs in a complex, ever-changing world is challenging; that is why it is a special privilege for me to be a part of these progressions in science. I am filled with gratitude as I am wrapping up this internship.
Alyson Kao2024 Intern at Camp Robert, Camp SLO, and Vandenberg
latest updates from the field
Wrapping Up 2025
This was a big year for our team! We focused on supporting stationary internship teams to collect thorough data at sites in Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and California. Shifting away from travel teams was a success, giving interns the chance to get to know their sites and take part in a wide range of activities, from spring habitat and breeding assessments to monitoring nectar resources and tagging monarchs in the fall.
Our interns in Texas tagged hundreds of monarchs with Monarch Watch sticker tags, tested for OE (Ophryocystis elektroscirrha), and collecting biometric data such as wing size, wing condition.
In California, our team is conducting Western Monarch Counts at Vandenberg Space Force Base and Camp Pendleton to help estimate the monarch population in the west.
We are excited to be continuing this project through next year. Stay tuned to hear about our plans for 2026!
Tracking Butterflies with Radio Tags
A highlight of the year was our partnership with Project Monarch. Through this collaboration, we used Cellular Tracking Technology (CTT) tags, tiny telemetry devices that transmit GPS location, altitude, and speed to track monarchs in real time. Our interns helped deploy these tags in Texas, Colorado, and California, contributing to one of the first large-scale efforts to follow migratory pathways and flight behavior without recapturing butterflies.
This work provides an unprecedented view of how monarchs move across North America and the stopover sites they rely on. These efforts gave interns unique hands-on experience and produced data that will help reveal monarch migratory behaviors.
Download the Project Monarch app and search “EFTA” in the monarch tab to follow our tagged butterflies.
Community Engagement and Outreach
Connecting people to nature is central to our mission. Our interns lead and participate in events that engage both military and local communities, inspiring appreciation for monarchs and other pollinators. Activities include:
Through the Symbolic Monarch Migration Program, we bring monarch migration to life for students on and near military installations. Using interactive lessons, students follow the journey of monarchs as they travel from their breeding grounds to their overwintering sites in Mexico. The students exchange paper butterflies and letters to classrooms in Mexico, connecting them to the monarch migration in a unique way.
The program can be tailored to teach the butterfly lifecycle, the importance of milkweed, nectar resources, and healthy habitats, while inspiring environmental stewardship and an appreciation for pollinators.
We lead hands-on habitat restoration projects and pollinator garden plantings and we encourage community members to get involved. Participants gain practical experience improving local ecosystems while supporting monarchs and other pollinators.
EFTA is the official host of the globally celebrated World Migratory Bird Day. We host events celebrating migratory birds, offering bird walks, presentations, interactive demonstrations, and citizen science activities. These programs connect communities to wildlife and highlight the importance of habitat conservation.
We engage the public at community events through interactive booths and educational tables. Participants learn about monarchs, pollinators, and habitat conservation through hands-on activities, displays, and discussions with our team. This outreach brings science to the community and inspires stewardship for local wildlife.
We design custom educational experiences for schools, community groups, and installation events. These programs engage participants of all ages, fostering curiosity, environmental awareness, and connection to local wildlife. Reach out to dmay@environmentamericas.org if you’d like to request an educational program at or near your installation.
Intern blogs
Five Aspects of a Great Field Day!
May 29, 2026 No Comments
Any type of field work is surely humbling, but working with monarch butterflies has been particularly interesting! You can plan a perfect survey on the calendar, but the day is really decided by a few key factors you can’t really control! After three years in
In the Field with Cattle and Other Things
May 18, 2026 No Comments
You heard me right, cattle. Following our daily survey routine in the field, I always see them and majority of the time, grazing within our plot we intend to survey. Sometimes, it gets scared away from me or the other way around. Here is my
Identifying Milkweed: A key to understanding the host plant of the Monarch Butterfly
May 15, 2026 No Comments
Introduction The Asclepias genus, better known as milkweed, is home to a special creature- the Monarch Butterfly! Monarch’s rely on milkweed plants for their entire lifecycle. From an egg the size of a pinhead to a fluttering adult butterfly, milkweed is present in every stage!
Hello EFTA, it’s good to be back!
May 5, 2026 No Comments
my Second Season with EFTA I am officially back! This is my second stint with Environment for the Americas (EFTA), and it just feels like the first. And speaking of the ‘firsts’, I will highlight some of the random things I experienced in my first
The Start of My Third Year!
May 1, 2026 No Comments
Hi everyone, I’m back! It is officially my third year as a Monarch and Milkweed Field Technician at Dyess AFB in Texas. We have been running the Integrated Monarch and Milkweed Protocol since Spring of 2024- covering now 13 plots across the installation! Through the
Senescence: My Monarch Internship Journey
November 13, 2025 No Comments
Hello everyone! I’m wrapping up my Fall 2025 season with Environment for the Americas as a Monarch Research and Education Intern at Joint Base San Antonio – Camp Bullis. It’s hard to believe how quickly this season has passed and how much I have learned