The ethics of raising monarchs in captivity (draft)
The Xerces Society, Monarch Joint Venture, and others have asserted that raising more than 10 monarchs in captivity, per individual or family, is unethical and harmful to wild populations of monarchs. They cite a number of reasons, including the spread of disease, inbreeding, decreased fitness from captive conditions (including a decreased ability to orient and migrate), and interference with scientific research.
They fear that a "feel good" motivation to increase monarch numbers through raising eggs at home will supplant or replace the essential conservation activities really needed to save monarchs: increasing habitat, reducing pesticides, and opposing climate change.
However, these opponents of captive breeding do acknowledge the educational benefits of raising monarchs. This means there's a balancing required: Does bringing monarchs to schools maximize public support for good conservation, while at the same time minimizing the real potential harms listed above? At this point, no one can say whether our activities create more harm than good. It's too complex. There's not enough data. Instead, we must concentrate on doing everything we can to enhance the good and minimize the harm.
Minimizing harm
Spreading disease is a very real threat that we take seriously. We test our breeders for OE and make additional efforts to eliminate its spread through our operations. We see very little evidence of other disease among our caterpillars and chrysalids, and record observations to demonstrate this.
We are not spreading the feel-good misconception that we are bolstering monarch numbers by raising and releasing them. We clearly state on this website that our goals are education and conservation.
We release our monarchs at the beginning of migration. If our monarchs raised in captivity are less fit, or are less able to migrate, they are not going to corrupt the gene pool. That's because they won't be able to complete the migration--they won't return in the spring and add their "corrupted genes" to the next generation. A similar argument has been applied to the OE parasite. Some researchers claim that migration functions to flush OE from the population, because OE-infected adults are less vigorous-- unable to complete the migration and pass the infection to future generations.
Some monarch scientists are aware of our activities. Karen Oberhauser approved our methods in 2019, and confirmed that I am able to identify OE infection in our potential breeders. She approved our rearing method when it involved one caterpillar per container. However, I believe we have reduced disease to almost zero when we rear them in bins. Moreover, our "open bin method" is more "natural" than closed containers because the caterpillars reside on whole milkweed stems that experience a natural cycling of humidity. We should reach out to other scientists to make sure we aren't affecting their work when we release monarchs in September.
Perhaps the most tangible harm from Monarchs for Kids is that we remove eggs or adults from the wild. We do release some of our breeders before they die, and we do produce far more butterflies than we remove--although they may be less fit. Therefore, we will strive to remove as few eggs and butterflies as possible, while maximizing production of eggs. To learn where improvement is possible, we will attempt to calculate the % survival at each stage in the process from egg through release of adults.
It may eventually be possible to sustain the entire operation by removing as few as 20 eggs from the wild each year. So far, our program has made enormous improvements over the years.
Maximizing good
Education is on the positive side of the balance sheet, providing citizens with both motivation and knowledge. Given the current political climate, education's value should be elevated when weighing benefit vs. harm. For example, the Endangered Species Act could be repealed with astonishing rapidity if we don't scale up education of the public about the monarch's plight, and its causes. Education of children is one of the most potent ways to influence public opinion, though it may take years to bear full fruit.
If children become familiar with and appreciate Monarchs, they will want to protect them.
After weighing the advantages and disadvantages, the Xerces Society has concluded it's OK for an individual or family to raise 10 monarchs a year. How might our program look when you apply that standard? A huge advantage of taking the monarch conservation to schools is that your audience is multiplied fourfold: students, parents, teachers, and officials all get the message. Let's consider each student as "an individual or family" that's allowed to raise 10 per year. We serve about 150 classrooms, with roughly 20 students per class. That means our program would be justified in raising 30,000 monarchs (150 x 20 x 10 monarchs) per year. If you multiply by the fourfold audience increase, we'd be allowed to raise 120,000 monarchs.
If you believe I'm overstating my case, then let's consider an entire class as equivalent to a family--we remove the X20 above. Then we are "justified," according to Xerces, in raising 1,500 caterpillars (150 x 10). In 2024, we raised/supplied about 1500 monarch eggs to schools.
Now let's try to measure how many students we reach per monarch removed from the wild population. In the summer of 2025, I removed about 25 eggs and 5 adults (30 total). Let's use 2024 figures for students served: about 150 classrooms x 20 students per class, or 3,000 students. 3,000/30=100. In other words, each monarch removed helped educate 100 students (ignoring parents, teachers, and officials). This exercise is useful because it shows how we can reduce our impact--remove fewer wild monarchs or reach more students.
Some of the wild monarchs we remove aren't "completely" removed. In 2025, female 3 was captured and produced less than 200 eggs. We then released her in healthy condition. A day later, she was observed in our garden flying strongly about.
Monarchs for Kids has tried to bring conservation concepts to classrooms. We have provided handouts on collecting milkweed seeds and growing milkweed plants. One year at Wingra School, we provided free milkweed plants to students who took them home to plant. We called it "Schoolyards to Backyards." How effective we are in promoting conservation is another kind of efficiency--an area that definitely needs improvement!
Teachers are a bit resistant to spreading the conservation message, given how busy they are. But there's more we can do.
Promoting native plantings at schools
Some years ago, when I was on the Board of Friends of Lake Wingra, I supervised a program that gave grants to schools for constructing and planting rain gardens. We funded rain gardens at four schools, plus a pollinator garden. That is probably too ambitious for Monarchs for Kids--but it does show more can be done at schools than just raising monarchs. A number of schools did plant milkweed without our help.
A proposal: Schools often have fences along the edges of their property. I believe we could get permission to stop mowing a strip three feet wide along the fence. This strip could then be planted with native plants. We need a partner like "Wild Ones" to provide the seedlings, and a volunteer to drill holes for the plants. Neighborhood volunteers would water after planting and during the first summer. Students would do the actual planting, giving them skin in the game.
The strip could be expanded lengthwise each year. Once the entire 3 foot strip was planted, the next year it could be widened with additional plantings. The prairie would expand year by year without additional permissions needed.
I maintain a large rain garden at Thoreau Elementary School, which I expand by a foot or so every year--no one objects. When I spoke to the principal recently, I mentioned plans to expand a bit. She replied, "Do whatever you want."
Unresolved questions for landscape experts:
- Rabbits eat milkweed. Do we need to protect seedlings with wire cages?
- Do we need to eliminate the grass first? Or can we plant into it?
- What other native species can complement the milkweed?
- Would an untended strip along a fence attract criticism? Certainly not for fence lines facing away from the street.