Photos/Video: Pioneering Technology Helps Protect Monarch Butterfly Species During EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival

Some groundbreaking research is happening at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival to protect the North American monarch butterfly. As part of this research, these colorful insects are being outfitted with teeny, tiny baby backpacks which are actually radio telemetry tags. These “backpacks" as the Conservation Team calls them, are roughly the same size as a tiny grain of rice.

But what are they studying? Monarch caterpillars’ favorite food, milkweed! The backpacks allow Disney’s conservationists to track the monarchs’ movement and preference for their favorite food so that more can be learned about their taste for different types of milkweeds.

A major threat to the monarch butterfly species is their increasing exposure to a parasite commonly known as OE, which monarch butterflies can be exposed to from eating tropical milkweed. While native milkweed dies back in the winter, tropical milkweed does not. So, when monarch butterfly larvae hatch on the tropical milkweed leaves, they ingest high levels of leftover OE that has built up over time. OE negatively impacts almost every aspect of butterfly life, and research estimates that about 80% of Florida monarchs have the disease.  

Disney Conservation Director Dr. Zak is the Program Lead for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) Program for the monarch butterfly, which has been adopted by over 100 other AZA-accredited facilities nationwide. The SAFE program for monarch butterflies seeks to recover and sustain monarch populations by fostering healthy breeding and migratory environments and providing them with safe places to be dormant for the winter.

Guests can see this research for themselves at the EPCOT International Flower and Garden Festival. Guests can view the process every Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. outside Butterfly Landing, located near Journey Into Imagination With Figment in World Celebration. There, guests can keep a sharp eye out to see if they can spot the baby backpacks on these beautiful monarch butterflies.

If you’d like to visit EPCOT for yourself, perhaps in time to enjoy the International Flower & Garden Festival and these Monarch Butterflies, be sure to reach out to our friends at Mouse Fan Travel.