SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — When this monarch butterfly hits the sky it won’t be traveling alone. In fact, an energetic team of researchers will be following along with a revolutionary technology that’s already unlocking secrets that could help the entire species survive.

“I’ve described this technology as a spaceship compared to the wheel, like using a using a spaceship compared to the invention of the wheel. It’s teaching us so, so much more,” says Ray Moranz, Ph.D., a pollinator conservation specialist with the Xerces Society.

Moranz is part of a team that’s been placing tiny tracking devices on migrating monarchs. The collaboration is known as Project Monarch Science. It leverages solar powered radio tags that are so light they don’t affect the butterfly’s ability to fly. And they’re allowing researchers to track the Monarch’s movements in precise detail. With some 400 tags in place, the group already been able to get a nearly real time picture of monarch migrations east of the Rockies, with some populations experiencing dramatic twists and turns before making to wintering grounds in Mexico.

“They’re trying to go southward to Mexico. They can’t fight the winds. Instead, some of them were letting themselves be carried 50 miles north, 100 miles north, 200 miles the wrong way, which we are all extremely alarmed by and for good reason. Some of these monarchs, their migration was delayed by two or three weeks.

According to estimates, migrating monarch populations have dropped by roughly 80% or more across the country. And the situation with coastal species here in California is especially dire. Blake Barbaree is a senior scientist with Point Blue Conservation Science. He and his colleagues are tracking Northern California populations now clustered around Santa Cruz.

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“This year, there’s it’s one of the lowest, populations recorded in the winter. And the core zones have been in Santa Cruz County and up in Marin County. So we’ve undertaken an effort to understand how the monarchs are really using these different groves around Santa Cruz by tagging some in the state parks around town,” Barbaree explains.

He says being able to track individual monarchs could help identify microhabitats in the area that help them survive, ranging from backyard pollinator gardens to protected open space to forest groves.

“So we’re really getting a great insight to how reliant they are on these big trees, but also the surrounding area and people’s even backyards. And then along the way around the coast, how they’re transitioning among some of these groves. And we’re looking for some of the triggers for those movements. Right. Why are they doing this and what’s what’s driving them to do that? So those questions are still a little bit further out as we get to analyze some more some more of the data,” he believes.

And that data is getting even more precise. The tags, developed by Cellular Tracking Technologies, can be monitored from dedicated listening stations. But the company is also able to crowdsource signals detected by cellphone networks on phones with Bluetooth connectivity and location access activated. And they’ve also helped develop an app that allows volunteers, citizen scientists, and the general public to track and report Monarch locations themselves using their smartphones.

CEO Michael Lanzone says the initial response has been overwhelming.

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“We were super surprised to see 3,000 people download the monarch app. It’s like, you know, but people really love monarchs. There’s something that people just relate to,” says Lanzone who like many staffers at Cellular Tracking Technologies, has a background in wildlife ecology.

A number of groups are pushing to have the monarchs designated nationally as a threatened species. If that ultimately happens, researchers believe the tracking data could help put better protections in place.

“They’re highly vulnerable to, you know, some of the different things that that that we as humans do around using pesticides and also potentially cutting, you know, cutting down trees for various reasons. Sometimes they’re for safety and sometimes it’s, you know, for development. But so having an understanding of how we can do those things more sensibly and protect the places that they need the most,” says Point Blue’s Barbaree.

And it’s happening with the help of researchers, citizen scientists, and a technology weighing no more than a few grains of rice.

The smartphone app is called Project Monarch Science. You can download it for free and begin tracking.