2 Michigan spots to see monarch butterfly ‘super generation’ during fall migration

Fall is in the air, and this year’s monarch “super generation” is on the move.

The first sightings of monarch butterfly roosts have been reported, signaling that the annual fall migration is underway. Scores of the iconic black-and-orange winged insects — recently proposed for threatened status under the Endangered Species Act — travel thousands of miles to their wintering grounds in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico.

One factor that makes the long journey so remarkable is that the butterflies traveling south from the northern U.S. and Canada are not the same ones that arrived from Mexico in the spring.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service , the fall migratory monarchs are actually the spring monarchs’ great-great-grandchildren — sometimes known as the monarch “super genera