The annual Monarch Tagging at the Baker Wetlands was canceled Saturday morning because fall-flowering plants haven't bloomed, meaning monarchs wouldn't be drawn to the area.

Blame it on the beavers.

They bungled this year’s butterfly event at Baker Wetlands, disappointing dozens of people eager to participate in the annual Monarch Tagging event.

“There simply are no butterflies here,” Monarch Watch director Chip Taylor said Saturday as he stood by an entrance to the wetlands, reporting the bad news.

Spring rains flooded the area, and then beavers got busy and plugged up drainage areas, Taylor said. Consequently, the area didn’t dry out until July – too late for fall-flowering plants to become established.

Monarchs typically are drawn to the wetlands’ blooms of Spanish needles, asters and sunflowers.

“Those flowers put off a plume of odor that wafts up into the sky, and as those butterflies fly in, they just come right down on that odor,” Taylor said. “You can see the butterflies just drop out of the sky to come to this location. They’re just not going to do it this year because we don’t have the blooms here.”

But monarchs – in the midst of their trek to Mexico – still will make an appearance across the area in upcoming days, Taylor said, adding that Monarch Watch’s home base at Foley Hall on Kansas University’s West Campus will be a great place to see the monarchs.

School children from the Kansas City area that came out for the tagging event instead headed to Foley Hall for a tour and quick lesson.

They didn’t seem to mind.

“The coolest thing I saw was a chrysalis,” 11-year-old Gil Galindo said. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”