A case study of a conservation flagship species: the monarch butterfly

What makes a flagship species effective in engaging conservation donors? Large, charismatic mammals are typically selected as ambassadors, but a few studies suggest butterflies—and monarchs in particular—may be even more appealing. To gather more information about people’s responses to monarchs, we conducted an empirical study of member submissions to a successful conservation campaign, the Monarch Story Campaign, conducted by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The set of 691 stories along with their associated demographic and donation data was analyzed in a mixed-methods study using qualitative analysis and tests of association. The results showed that people often described encounters with monarchs in childhood and as adults. They expressed strong, positive emotions, and lauded the monarch’s beauty and other “awe-inspiring” qualities and expressed wonder at their lifecycle (i.e., metamorphosis and migration). They also raised conservation themes of distress at monarch loss, calls for action, and caretaking, such as being “fragile” and “in need.” Sharing personal encounters was associated with current efforts to save the species and more past financial donations, while a second pattern tied more donations to awe at the monarch’s mass migration. These results imply that conservation campaigns built around species people encounter may build lifelong awareness, concern, and actions towards conservation.