Ellwood's Monarchs Have Been Scarce, and Some Now Show Up on Your Phone

On September 18, 2026, someone fitted a monarch near Grand View, Idaho, with a solar-powered tag about the size of a few grains of rice. Thirty-eight days and more than 600 miles later, on October 26, that butterfly landed at Sandpiper Golf Course, at the western edge of Ellwood. It is catalogued as WR087-LULU, and the City of Goleta's Monarch Press calls it Lulu.

Lulu shows what the Goleta Butterfly Grove has become. People used to come to Ellwood for orange clusters hanging from the eucalyptus. Now a visit is about individual butterflies that biologists can name, track and sometimes locate from a phone in your pocket. The tracking also feeds the replanting work that could bring the clusters back.

The counts, set against the grove's own history

The recent numbers are small. The City's biweekly counts across all Ellwood sites peaked at 20 butterflies as of December 1, 2025. The season before, the high was 34 in mid-November 2024. Noozhawk reported that after heavy rain, the January 2026 count found two monarchs at Ellwood East and none at seven other sites.

Those figures look bleak on their own. They look different against the City's longer record:

So the lowest season on this chart came right before three straight seasons in the tens of thousands. In its year-end update the City wrote, "This gives us hope." The longer trend is harsher. The City's grove page says the migratory western monarch population has fallen about 95% since the 1980s. It points to heat, wildfire, drought, severe storms, development and pesticide use in both the overwintering and breeding grounds.

In a given winter, the grove can swing from a handful of butterflies to a spectacle. Over decades, the population behind those swings has been shrinking. That's why the work at Ellwood has shifted from showing off a crowd to learning what each butterfly does.

What a tag the weight of rice tells you

The Santa Barbara Independent described the tags in December 2025. Each one weighs 60 milligrams and costs $200. At that point, five monarchs had been tagged at Ellwood, out of more than 400 nationwide that year. The tags come from Cellular Tracking Technologies, a New Jersey company, and talk over Bluetooth to a free phone app.

The tagging is done at dawn. According to the Independent, the team catches butterflies early in the morning while it is still too cold for them to fly. They weigh each one and check its condition, hold the wings down with small weights, and attach the tag with eyelash glue.

The biologist doing that work at Ellwood is Charis van der Heide of Althouse and Meade. She explained in the same article why individual tracking matters more than a headcount:

"Maybe there's one spot where they like to go for nectar, so that can tell us where we should plant more."

If the tags show which flowers and trees the few remaining butterflies actually use, the next round of planting can target those spots. The Independent also noted that the team can line up butterfly movements with the City of Goleta's weather stations to see how monarchs behave before and after storms.

This fall, according to the City's Monarch Press, Ellwood Friends and Althouse & Meade plan to tag 10 monarchs at Ellwood with the same technology Lulu carries.

Finding a tagged monarch on your walk

During a walk with the Independent's reporter, van der Heide opened the app, saw that a tagged monarch named Angela was close by, and a few seconds later watched orange and black wings fly past. Anyone can do the same:

1. Get the free Project Monarch app for iOS or Android, or set up a free account at projectmonarch.org/app.
2. Turn on Bluetooth and scan while you're near the grove. Althouse & Meade's research page explains that any tag your phone detects shows up in the app.
3. Open a butterfly's track page and tap Follow. The app sends you a notification the next time that monarch is detected anywhere.

Your phone also helps the researchers. In an October 6, 2026 release, Project Monarch explains that its network picks up tagged monarchs through ordinary phones, tablets and computers, along with receiver stations. That same release reported three monarchs from Winnipeg, Bemidji and Toronto detected in Coahuila, Mexico, within 48 minutes of each other. A phone scanning on the Ellwood trail is a small part of that network. Althouse & Meade notes that uploaded detections go into the research data.

The grove is being rebuilt underneath you

The trails you walk to reach the grove are newer than they look. The November 2025 storms dropped about nine inches of rain on the area in seven days. According to the City's year-end update, the new drainage, erosion control and trail work held up. The Santa Barbara Shores culvert came through undamaged, the new trails eroded less and were safer when muddy than the old ones, and the drainage pools below the main viewing area held water as designed.

Fire crews also worked from May through October 2025 across 60 acres. They cleared dead and downed wood, removed ladder fuels and non-native shrubs, and felled standing dead or high-risk trees. The City says this fire-related vegetation work will resume in 2026.

Volunteers did much of the replanting. In 2025, Ellwood logged more than 1,000 volunteer sign-ins over 29 workdays, and volunteers planted more than 550 trees and 2,500 plants, along with laying irrigation, mulching and weeding. This fall, Ellwood Friends and the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade are working with the City to plant native trees and restore monarch habitat. Workdays are set for November 7 and 15, with registration through the Bucket Brigade. The City lists further volunteer dates at CityofGoleta.org/Ellwood-now.

Timing a visit this winter

According to the City's grove page, monarchs reach the coast in October, settle into the most wind-sheltered trees in November, and usually peak at Ellwood in mid-December, when they gather in clusters for protection. By mid-March they have all left for their spring breeding grounds. In a low year, mid-December is still the best window for seeing butterflies grouped together.

The Xerces Society's Western Monarch Count runs its mid-season survey from November 14 through December 6, 2026. A late-season survey follows from December 26, 2026, through January 10, 2027. These are counting periods for volunteers and biologists, not public tours. Their results put Ellwood in context with the rest of the coast. For Ellwood itself, the City posts its biweekly counts at GoletaButterflyGrove.com.

Practical details from the City:

• Hours and cost: Open sunrise to sunset, free. The City accepts donations for the Monarch Butterfly Docent Program, which it says it is revitalizing.
• Parking: Free lot at the Ellwood Mesa Open Space & Sperling Preserve parking area, 7729 Hollister Avenue, across from Ellwood Elementary School. There's a portable restroom at the lot.
• The walk: A little over half a mile to the grove, following butterfly trail markers.
• By bus: MTD Line 25 stops at Viajero on Hollister Avenue, near the lot.
• Bring: Sturdy shoes and binoculars.
• Weather: Stay away when it's raining or the ground is muddy from a recent storm, since trees can fall and paths can be blocked.
• Rules: Stay on designated trails and out of roped-off areas. Keep dogs leashed. No bicycles, horses or motorized vehicles in the grove. Don't touch the butterflies, and watch for monarchs "puddling" on the ground near the grove entrance.

When there are only a few butterflies, binoculars and the app on the same walk work well together. The app tells you a tagged monarch is nearby, and binoculars help you find it in the canopy. Whatever this season's counts turn out to be, you may find Lulu, or one of the 10 butterflies Ellwood Friends and Althouse & Meade plan to tag at Ellwood this fall.

At Caleb Overton, Ellwood Mesa comes up whenever Goleta clients ask what the west end is like day to day, and the grove's restoration is one of the bigger changes happening there. If you live near Ellwood and want to talk through how open space like this affects your home's value, request a complimentary home valuation and we'll go through it with you.