CHICAGO — An expert has confirmed what backyard gardeners and amateur naturalists have been saying for weeks: There are fewer monarch butterflies in Illinois this summer. At the national Monarch Larva ...

Every Monday in August, Heidi Emmons is leading a group of citizen scientists into fields containing milkweed to count monarch caterpillars and eggs. The goal is to learn more about how monarch ...

Nine monarch caterpillars that emerged late in the season would have faced certain death had an Evergreen Park man not ...

Besides milkweed, monarchs need access to lots of nectar plants to build up their body fat for the long trip south. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) last week added the ...

Our neighbor Mary has a small patch of milkweed behind her potting shed. It’s shaded by a young sassafras tree, and some Japanese stilt grass is pushing its way in as well. We use neighbor John and ...

The monarch butterfly life cycle begins with a whirl of wings in the heat of the summer sun. As a female monarch sips nectar from a wildflower, a male hovers nearby. A pheromone is released from tiny ...