There are upwards of 17,500 butterfly species worldwide, about 750 of them in the United States. But most of the 28 million golfers in the country can likely identify only one, the orange and black monarch, Danaus plexippus.
For a creature that weighs less than a paperclip, the monarch is ferociously resilient. In late August each year, the fall migration of millions of monarchs takes off from northern climes, heading to their winter hibernation grounds of central Mexico. It’s a journey of some 1,500 up to 3,000 miles, lasting months, as the butterflies cover roughly 50 to 100 miles a day. Few make it the whole way —adults live only four to five weeks, so it’s a multi-generational epic odyssey.
How the insects know where to go is one of those Science Is Amazing! curiosities, more perplexing than why that last putt didn’t break into the hole. But resilient or not, monarchs have been having a tough go of it, their migrating numbers dropping precipitously in recent years. Fighting distance and weather and predators is one set of challenges, dealing with vanishing habitat another.
And that’s where golf courses come in.
Audubon International is working with nearly 1,000 golf courses throughout the United States and Canada after a recent grant from The FairWays Foundation helped add 127 golf courses. The courses, through the aptly named Monarchs in the Rough program, set aside protected habitat for the migrating creatures. The nonprofit organization (not to be confused with the more bird-oriented National Audubon Society), has long offered ways for golf courses and other large land properties to increase sustainable environmental efforts, through a variety of certification initiatives.
In early 2018 it teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund to start helping out the monarchs.
"Both organizations had kind of come to the same idea at the same time," says Christine Kane, CEO of Audubon International. "That to have a significant positive impact on the habitat that monarch butterflies need during their annual migration, you need to work with owners of large areas of property. And so they approached us about golf courses.
"On average only about 30 percent of a golf course property is actually used to play the game. So we began to work with EDF, looking at those out of play areas and what could be done there to support monarch butterfly habitat." The name of the program practically suggested itself.
To participate a property has to agree to put up at least one acre of habitat for the insect, meaning planting native milkweed, the only plant monarch caterpillars eat, along with native nectar-rich wildflowers the adult insects feed on, the seeds for which are supplied by Audubon International — along with signage so players on the course will have a clue to what’s going on.
Kane says, “Golf still labors under older stereotypical beliefs that courses are turf deserts, where nothing positive happens for the environment. The way courses are managed today, nothing could be further from the truth. So we also see the program as showing that golf courses are healthy, natural environments for species like the butterfly. It’s a small impact on the operation of a course, but it can have a huge impact on our environment.”
Individual courses naturally vary in the extent of their involvement in the program, but Harold Ammons, for one, is all in. The son of a superintendent, Ammons has served as the same for close to 40 years at the Flat Creek Country Club, a 27-hole Joe Lee design, in Peachtree City, Georgia.
Ammons doesn’t just dip his toe into the Monarchs program; he’s actually got a bit of a wild kingdom going on at the club (which he regularly updates on a Facebook page, Flat Creek Turf Maintenance): there are bluebird houses, purple martin feeders, a turtle habitat near a creek, and beehives. He’s given out jars of honey to members as gifts, particularly those who help him out in his conservationist works.
One poetically collective noun for butterflies is a kaleidoscope. Ammons says, “They’re really a treat to see. We don't get many as they migrate north, but when they head back south they'll stay for two or three weeks, a flood of them. We have areas of milkweed and wildflowers, everything set up and ready to go for them when they get here. They're so, so beautiful. And they'll just load up with the flowers nectar, they'll lay some eggs, and the caterpillars will latch onto the milkweed.”
Once the air begins to chill the kaleidoscope will take off. And as Harold noted in a recent Facebook post, “Watching this cycle of life unfold is always exciting to see.”
In the recently ended season in Manchester, Vermont, Peter White was in his ninth year at the Ekwanok Country Club, but his first as superintendent. He says, “We began participating in the Monarchs in the Rough program six or seven years ago. We identified a few areas on the course that have a pretty good milkweed population and we put up a little sign Audubon International provides and we preserve those areas throughout the season.
"It’s a cool little feature for members. We have some who go around the course each Friday to check on the areas — as well as the 20 or so birdhouses we have throughout the course. It’s centrally located near the eleventh green and adjacent to the tee boxes so members can see them. I drive by and take a quick count from time to time. I’ve seen maybe six to ten caterpillars, but tons of butterflies.
"It does get to be a bit of a maintenance hazard toward fall when the seed pods open up and start flying everywhere. They land on the green and make quite a mess because they tend to stick to the putting surface. But it’s worth it; it’s awesome in summer."
Out west the monarchs have a shorter migration to the southern California Pacific coast, but the program is lively out there as well. Wayne Mills is sort of the west coast counterpart to Ammons, having served as the superintendent at the La Cumbra Country Club in Santa Barbara for 22 years before retiring. Because of the depth of his conservation work at the club the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America gave Mills its 2024 President’s Award for Environmental Stewardship.
"Yes, we sometimes call it Wayne’s World out here," says Paul Robertson, La Cumbra’s new director of agronomy. "The Monarchs program continues, all the identifying signs are up, and it’s most likely to expand in the future."
It was during an extended drought period back in 2008 when Mills first had the idea of replacing managed turf area. "I met Joanna and David Kisner, local ecologists," Mills says. "With my thoughts and their knowledge we started using true Santa Barbara native plants with the thought of creating wildlife corridors on the property — to help support not only the monarchs, but bees, bluebirds, barn owls. We even had foxes brood their young in these areas.
"So as time went on we identified more turf areas that could be removed from irrigation and added to support the corridors." And it’s a seasonal show, as the native plants bloom in sequence and the wildlife takes its migratory turns.
“It’s good to see that people’s interest in the monarchs is still high,” says Kane, referring to a November 2025 New York Times article noting solar-powered radio tags being applied to track the migrating monarchs.
According to the article, “Most monarchs weigh 500 to 600 milligrams, so each tag-bearing migrator making the transcontinental journey is, by weight, equivalent to a half-raisin carrying three uncooked grains of rice." And it notes that the truly obsessed can download a Project Monarch app to track or report sightings.
As for Audubon International, Kane says, “Our goal right now is to crack the 1,000 mark in participating golf courses." That’s a lot of milkweed, but with some 15,000 to 16,000 courses in the U.S. — and if you like seeing monarchs fluttering about — that should be doable.
