It's official: FMR is a Monarch Joint Venture partner

We're excited to announce that FMR has officially joined the Monarch Joint Venture partner network.

MJV protects monarchs and their migration by collaborating with partners to deliver habitat conservation, education, and science across the monarch's geographic range. FMR aligns with all four pillars of their work: education, habitat, science, and partnerships. We restore prairie and savanna to benefit pollinators, use restoration sites for educational activities, and collect data for research, monitoring, and community science programs. 

We also use MJV's national program or protocol, the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program, in our community-based monarch monitoring program.  Volunteers in FMR's Pollinator Evaluation Program, or "PEP," help us assess the impact of our restoration work at three sites: William H. Houlton Conservation Area in Elk River, Vermillion River Linear Park in Hastings, and River Heights Park in Inver Grove Heights. By using MJV's national program, we help track the monarch population, document conservation efforts, and shape our collective understanding of how monarchs interact with our environment.

Just in: Data from our first PEP season!

FMR volunteers surveyed over 3,700 milkweed plants and found over 500 monarch eggs and larvae and 143 adult monarchs. These observations accounted for over 20% of IMMP observations reported so far from the entire country in 2025!

This means that our FMR restorations provide disproportionately good habitat for monarchs compared to all sites being monitored through MJV's national monitoring program.

As an MJV partner, FMR is excited to connect with others studying monarchs, collaborate on monarch research projects, and share our expertise in pollinator biology, sampling methods, research design, analysis, and conservation applications to support monarchs for generations to come. 

We look forward to sharing more about our pollinator survey results in future issues of Mississippi Messages.