A record crowd showed up to this past weekend’s Butterfly Festival at the Kansas Wetlands Education Center. Nearly 650 people showed up Saturday to catch and tag the monarch butterflies just northeast of Great Bend.

KWEC Site Manager Curtis Wolf says outside of a parking issue for so many people attending, the three-hour event went well.

Curtis Wolf Audio

Wolf says the monarch butterflies leave their over-wintering grounds in Central Mexico in the spring time and stop in northern states in the United States. As they head south back to Mexico, they pass through Kansas and Cheyenne Bottoms. Wolf added it usually takes four generations of butterflies to make the roundtrip to Mexico.

Despite the high volume of participants this weekend to tag the monarchs, there were only 10-12 monarch butterflies tagged.

Curtis Wolf Audio

During the last two years, 13 tagged monarchs released at KWEC have been recovered from winter roosts in Mexico.