Butterfly Education Program

Who doesn’t love running around in a sunny field with a butterfly net? The Smokies are home to nearly 2,000 species of butterflies, skippers, and moths, including the famous Monarch Butterfly. Every year, Eastern Monarchs migrate en masse to Mexico for the winter, and we would like to learn more about their migration and population status by monitoring them. This free educational program engages participants in monarch natural history, community science, identification of local butterflies, and connection to place in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Age Group: Any age. Children under 18 need an adult guardian in attendance.

Seasonality: Annually each fall. Dates are published in early September.

Why it Matters

Butterflies are important insects that are pollinators and prey, and provide inspiration to those who notice them. For Monarchs in particular, tagging helps us uncover where our Tennessee monarchs overwinter, survival rates along the journey, the timing of the migration, and if their migration changes due to climate change. These beautiful and fascinating insects face many threats, and participating in this educational program helps our community come together to learn how to protect these and other pollinator species in our local ecosystem and beyond.

Important Note for Previous Butterfly Education Day Participants

If you joined us for a Butterfly Education Program last year, please do not register for 2025 dates until September 15th.

We appreciate your interest in joining another butterfly education session with Tremont! One primary goal of this program is to invite as many people as possible into the magical world of Lepidoptera, including the profoundly culturally important monarch butterfly. We also hope to encourage people to consider how they can support the natural systems we inhabit in their daily lives. To maximize our impact, it is important to invite new participants each year with our limited number of butterfly education dates. We hope that after attending a butterfly education session, people are inspired to continue growing their involvement with community science.

If you participated in a Butterfly Education Program in 2024, we kindly ask that you refrain from signing up for a 2025 date at this time. Instead, we encourage you to use the knowledge and experience you have gained in your own community, expanding the reach and impact of our educational programs.

Here are some other awesome opportunities to get involved with science in the local community:

Tag monarchs in your own backyard! Order tags and catalog your local populations through Monarch Watch. This is the same organization we work with to monitor monarch populations in the Smokies, so the process should look very familiar.
Join a North American Butterfly Association butterfly count. Find an active count in your neighborhood, or create your own!
Help expand Tremont’s butterfly education program by becoming a volunteer leader. Reach out to [email protected] for more details.
Participate in a bioblitz with our friends at Discover Life in America (DLIA). Just like Tremont, DLIA are Great Smoky Mountains National Park partners, but they focus entirely on finding, naming, and cataloging species in the national park. Participating in a BioBlitz not only helps you learn about new species, but continues to add to GSMNP research.
Check out an event with our friends at Seven Islands State Birding Park in Knoxville. September education and volunteer days include monarch and butterfly monitoring, bird identification, and other fascinating local ecology topics.
Volunteer with our friends at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville. Needs include trail management and invasive species removal, supporting upcoming special events, and more.
Check out other Tremont volunteer opportunities! Support our work on our second campus in Townsend, or help out with current needs in the Smokies.

2025 Butterfly Education Dates

We look forward to bringing this unique educational opportunity to our community members each year. To ensure many different families and individuals can experience this opportunity, please limit your group size to 5. Larger groups can consider booking a private tagging date for a set fee – see below. Please only register for a single date to make space for others.

Registration is required to participate for each member of your group. If you are experiencing difficulty registering due to capacity limits, please try another available date. You will receive a confirmation email once you have successfully registered.

If you participated in Tremont’s Butterfly Education program last year, please do not register for a 2025 date at this time.
See the note in the box above for more info.

Saturday, September 13 – Sparks – Full

Monday, September 15 – Hyatt – Full

Tuesday, September 16 – Sparks – Full

Saturday, September 20 – Hyatt – Full

Tuesday, September 23 – Sparks – Full

Friday, September 26 – Sparks – Full

Saturday, September 27 – Hyatt – Full

Saturday, September 27 – Sparks – Full

Tuesday, September 30 – Sparks – Full

Thursday, October 2 – Hyatt – Full

Friday, October 3 – Hyatt – Full

Tuesday, October 14 – Sparks – Full

Tuesday, October 14 – Hyatt – Full

Thursday, October 16 – Sparks – Full

Thursday, October 16 – Hyatt – Full

Saturday, October 18 – Sparks – Full

Tuesday, October 21 – Sparks – Full

Friday, October 24 – Hyatt – Full

Saturday, October 25 – Sparks – Full

Wednesday, October 29 – Hyatt – Full

If the dates you want to attend are full, you can join our waiting list. Email [email protected] with your name, number, and email address, the specific date you want to attend, and the number of adult and child participants you’d like to bring.

Support Our Work

These fun days in the field are free, but they do come at a cost. We invite you to contribute as much or as little as you like to our monarch tagging program. You can bring your donation with you on your tagging day, or you can simply visit the link below to donate online. Please write ‘Monarch tagging program’ in the comments section.

Donate for Monarchs

Scheduling Private Groups

Do you have an organized group of people that you would like to take out monarch-tagging? A ‘group’ could be defined as a scout troop, a home-school cooperative, a special school group, a birthday party, a business retreat, or even a group of friends and family. With our group reservation program, you have a special opportunity to reserve a day for your group of up to 10 people for a flat rate of $200. If you are interested in this opportunity, please email [email protected] to schedule a date and receive registration details. Available dates may differ from those listed above.

Where and when do we meet?

At the visitor information shelter at the beginning of the Cades Cove driving loop in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We usually caravan to the fields. We’ll typically be out for 2-4 hours, ending around 1:30 or 2pm (or later if the weather is nice). You must be registered to join.

What to Wear

Field clothing, especially long pants, and hard, protective shoes.

What to Bring

Please bring your signed NPS waiver forms
Plenty of water
Lunch and snacks
Sun screen and a hat for protection from the sun

Optional Items to Consider Bringing

A butterfly net with a big hoop if you have one (don’t go buy one – we provide these)
Camera, Binoculars
Butterfly Field Guides
Bird and Wildflower Field Guides