Preliminary Western Monarch Counts in California

Published: 11/09/2022

As of November 8th, 2022, The Xerces Society has received reports of over 60,000 monarch butterflies across 30+ overwintering sites in California, representing a relatively strong start to the overwintering season for western migratory monarchs. These numbers are derived from preliminary counts conducted prior to Xerces’ annual Western Monarch Count (WMC) effort. To learn more about the WMC project, visit WesternMonarchCount.org.

While we anticipate that our volunteers will monitor more than 200 overwintering sites this fall and winter for the official Thanksgiving Count (11/12/22 – 12/4/22) and New Year’s Count (12/24/22 – 1/8/22) monitoring periods, some of the sites surveyed for these preliminary counts include popular hot-spots like Natural Bridges, Pacific Grove, and Pismo Beach:

• Natural Bridges: monitors report 5,500 as of 10/26/22
• Pacific Grove: monitors report 11,171 as of 11/4/22
• Pismo Beach: monitors report 24,052 as of 11/1/22

Additionally, monarchs remain at some of the more northern California Bay Area sites, like the San Leandro Golf Course site, which had 1,268 monarchs as of 10/22/22. And, several dozen monarch butterflies have been reported at overwintering sites between Ventura County and Orange County, as well.

Monarch counts continue to climb each week, and multiple overwintering site managers have communicated that they’re seeing better numbers this season compared to last year at the same time.