Connecting the history, the 2025–2026 season, and the questions for future conservation research.
Project Monarch Exchange brings together monarch researchers and partners to strengthen monarch conservation across the Americas. Please join us for four days of inspiration and collaboration at the Cape May Point Arts & Science Center.
Treasures
A working meeting for the people who follow the butterflies.
Project Monarch Exchange brings together monarch researchers and partners to connect the field's history, the landmark 2025–2026 tracking season, and the next questions we can answer to strengthen monarch conservation across the Americas.
For four days in July, researchers, land stewards, citizen-scientist coordinators, and conservation partners gather at the southern tip of New Jersey — one of the eastern flyway's most consequential stopovers — to compare notes, share data, and decide what to do next.
Connect the field's history
Three decades of tagging, count data, milkweed restoration, and overwintering surveys — the lineage of work that brought us here.
The 2025–26 tracking season
The first year individual monarchs were followed from Canada to Mexico — 60-milligram tags, a continent-wide detection network, an unprecedented dataset.
The questions we can answer
Working sessions to scope the next two years of coordinated study — and the policy and stewardship that follows from it.
For the first time, individual monarchs were followed continent to continent.
One season. Three countries. A continent of data.
From milkweed plots in Ontario through staging grounds along the eastern flyway to the oyamel forests of Michoacán — the 2025–26 season produced the most complete picture we've ever had of monarch movement across the Americas.
The July meeting is where we sit with that picture together. Pre-circulated datasets, lightning talks, working sessions. Conversation and conservation are the mission.
Four days on the Cape, with room on either side.
Four threads, woven across the week.
A full scientific program
Plenaries, lightning talks, and small-group working sessions.
Cape May natural areas
World-class birding and nature exploration at The Point, Higbee Beach, and the Meadows are all within walking or biking distance of the Center.
Public evening events
Monday's kickoff and Wednesday's keynote-plus-film evening will provide experiential opportunities for the wider Cape May community.
Premiere of Generation Treasures
The new monarch documentary screens Wednesday evening as part of the public program, following Eduardo Rendón's keynote.
Where the eastern flyway meets the sea.
The Cape May Point
Arts & Science Center.
A historic former convent at the foot of the Cape May Lighthouse, restored as a home for art, science, and conservation. The Atlantic on one side, the Delaware Bay on the other, the lighthouse keeping watch overhead.
We'll meet in its lecture hall, eat in its dining room, and walk to the dunes between sessions. Lodging is on-site, so nothing about this meeting requires a car once you arrive.
Simple rooms, steps from every session.
Convent-era guest rooms with original wood floors, white quilts, and good morning light. Walk to the lecture hall, the dining room, and the dunes.
Rooms are limited and assigned in registration order. Couples sharing a bed pay a single room rate plus a small per-night supplement.
Meals and meetings, under the porches.
The Center's interior courtyard and historic halls provide a wonderful backdrop to this equally historic event.
Public lectures and the Wednesday evening film premiere take place in the main lecture hall just inside.
Tagging, detecting, repeating — across the Americas.
Hundreds of hands, one network.
The Cape May tagging events draw families, students, and longtime correspondents to the Center's lawn each fall. Every tag deployed here joins the same continental detection network. During the conference we will exchange best practices for tag deployment as well as share experiences with how we are connecting people to nature through Project Monarch and our collaboration.
Registration & lodging fees.
What the Cape offers, when we step outside.
Cape May rewards a half-day spent outside the lecture hall, and there's plenty within walking and biking distance of the Center.
The Point & the Lighthouse
Excellent walking trails, dune restoration, and the geography that funnels the flyway south, just steps from the Center.
Higbee Beach WMA
The Delaware bayshore, and one of the most iconic fall migration hotspots in the world. From here, on a clear day, you can see the dunes at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware.
The Nature Conservancy's South Cape May Meadows Preserve
The TNC preserve at first or last light is world-class, so we'll be sure to gather for self-organized walks for whoever's up for one.
Whale-watching excursions
Cape May Whale Watch & Research Center runs daily sails from the harbor. Easy to book directly for the day before or the day after the meeting.
The town itself
Cape May proper is a short bike ride away. Taking in the Victorian streets, eating fresh oysters, and a walk on the Washington Street Mall are all worthy excursions.
Save the dates.
The site goes live soon.
Registration will open in the coming weeks. Drop your email and we'll send a single message the day it does — nothing else, no list.