From the free lot at 7729 Hollister Avenue, across from Ellwood Elementary, the main monarch viewing area at the Goleta Butterfly Grove is about a 15-minute walk. The path goes through eucalyptus that is being thinned, replanted and rebuilt. By early November, the City of Goleta expects monarchs to be settling into whichever trees give them the best shelter from the wind. For decades, the reason to make this walk was the clusters: branches weighed down with orange. These days the trip is more like a search, and this is the second winter that searching has involved a smartphone.
A grove you can count on one hand
The Santa Barbara Independent reported that only 20 butterflies were counted across the grove during the 2025–26 overwintering season. In some earlier years, that number was over 20,000. The 20 came in October. After that the counts kept falling. In January 2026, biologists found two butterflies at Ellwood East. At the season's final count in early March, Noozhawk reported a single monarch.
The volunteer count gave much the same result. The Xerces Society's Western Monarch Count is a standardized survey taken from late November through early December 2025. It recorded 29 butterflies across nine Ellwood sites. Statewide, volunteers counted 12,260 monarchs at 249 sites, the third-lowest total since 1997. The year before, Xerces' mid-season count found only three monarchs across several Ellwood sites.
The numbers were low enough that the City changed how it counts. Its contracted biologists were scheduled to visit the sites every two weeks, but they went less often because there were so few butterflies to find. Charis van der Heide, senior biologist and monarch specialist with Althouse and Meade, had expected a thin season from the start. She also told Noozhawk there was reason for hope:
"While the low numbers this year are very sad to witness, we can find hope that the western population was able to rebound after the historically low numbers of 2020, and there is the possibility that they will rebound next season."
When there are this few, each one gets a backpack
Last winter, Ellwood's scientists started following individual butterflies to learn where they go.
In November and December 2025, Althouse & Meade put ultra-light tracking tags on 30 monarchs at three Central California overwintering sites. Noozhawk reported that five had been tagged at Ellwood by early December. By January, the Independent put the count at 10 tagged "in the area." According to Ellwood Friends, which helps fund the work, each tag weighs about as much as a grain of rice. The tags transmit over Bluetooth to the Project Monarch app and to the Motus network, a system of receiving stations.
Ellwood has its own receiver. Althouse & Meade built a Motus tower there in spring 2025, with four nodes and two weather stations. The station's summary lists 10 monarchs detected, with the most recent detection on March 8, 2026. That date matches the usual timing. Monarchs leave the Goleta area around mid-March, and Noozhawk reported that the trackers showed the local butterflies had already left for their spring migration by the final count.
Phones fill in what the tower can't cover. Biologists aren't the only ones who can pick up a tagged butterfly. In December, KCLU reported that an Ellwood docent detected four tagged monarchs in the grove using the app. Cellular Tracking Technologies, which co-developed the app, describes phones with Bluetooth and location turned on as passive receivers in the wider tracking network.
This winter is the second year of the study. Ellwood Friends says the scientists hope to repeat last year's methods so they can learn more about how monarchs move around during the winter and where they disperse in spring. The group also offers donors the chance to name a tagged butterfly for a contribution of $1,000 or more, limited to the first five donors this season.
How to scan from the trail
Before your next walk, here are the steps the researchers and the app's makers lay out:
- Download the free Project Monarch Science app, made by Cape May Point Science Center and Cellular Tracking Technologies.
- Turn on your phone's Bluetooth. Althouse & Meade's instructions say to then scan locally from inside the app.
- Go outside and look for monarchs. If a tagged butterfly is nearby, it shows up in the app.
- Upload your detections to the data server. Cape May's page asks participants to record detections and upload them so researchers can use them.
Timing matters. Ellwood Friends says this season's tags will be activated sometime over the coming four months, so an empty scan in early November may only mean the tags aren't on yet. The City says Ellwood's population usually peaks in mid-December, when the butterflies cluster for protection.
A grove rebuilt for the next good year
The trees the app scans through are different from the ones a longtime visitor remembers. The California Coastal Commission issued a permit for the City's Monarch Butterfly Habitat Management Phase 1 Implementation Plan in May 2024, and more than 500 volunteers came out once restoration began. In 2025, the City improved the grove's trails and drainage and put in a temporary footbridge. The City's timeline lists restoration and vegetation management as continuing through 2026. The Phase 1 plan is still listed as in progress. Its work includes planting and caring for trees, managing hazardous vegetation, monitoring monarchs and improving the visitor experience.
The City puts it plainly on its visitor page: "We are clearing dead and dying trees, restoring habitat, planting thousands of new trees, and tracking individual monarchs to learn where they go." The tagging and the planting serve the same goal. One shows where the few remaining butterflies go. The other is meant to give a larger population somewhere to land if numbers come back. The same page notes that Ellwood Mesa Open Space is a natural area with falling trees and eroding trails, and that visitors enter at their own risk. The City's FAQ lists the grove's hours as 8 a.m. to sunset, and there is no admission fee.
The City also says it is revitalizing the Monarch Butterfly Docent Program and bringing school field trips back. For a longer walk, the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County's 9.3-acre Coronado Butterfly Preserve connects the grove to the Ellwood Shores bluffs, Santa Barbara Shores County Park, Devereux Slough and the beach. The Land Trust names November through February as the best time to visit.
This season's calendar
The grove's winter has a few fixed dates, plus one much further out:
- Mid-November to early December: The Western Monarch Count's mid-season window runs from November 14 to December 6, 2026. A late-season window follows from December 26, 2026, to January 10, 2027. Volunteers have to register each year.
- Mid-December: Ellwood's usual peak.
- Mid-March: By this point, the monarchs have left for their spring breeding grounds.
- June 6, 2030: The Independent reported that on September 30, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to issue a final listing decision for the monarch by this date. The agreement resolved a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety. The monarch was proposed for "threatened" status in December 2024, but that proposal was never finalized.
The City posts biweekly counts on its Goleta Butterfly Grove page. In late October 2026, the chart for this season was still marked as coming soon. When it's updated, that page will have the first official numbers for this winter.
At Searching Santa Barbara, we follow Ellwood every winter the way many of our Goleta neighbors do. If you'd like to talk about the parts of the Good Land that make a place feel like home, from the grove trails to the bluffs beyond them, schedule a 15‑minute consultation with Andrea.
