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Contents:
1) Welcome!
3) Tag Recoveries and Tag Recovery Fund
5) Spring Observations - Very Important
10) How to Unsubscribe from this Update
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1) Welcome to Monarch Watch's Update List!
You are receiving this email because you have provided Monarch Watch with your email address at some point and expressed interest in receiving updates from us. If you do not wish to receive these periodic (probably monthly) email updates or feel that you were subscribed in error, please see the unsubscribe information at the end of this message.
Have you somehow missed (or misplaced ;-) an update? Now you can find all of the updates archived online at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/update
If you know someone that you think might be interested in receiving these email updates from Monarch Watch with monarch news, special announcements, tips on raising monarchs in your classroom, monarch tagging information and a whole lot more, please send them on over to
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/signup
to join our new Monarch-Watch-Update email list - it's easy!
Monarch Watch (http://www.MonarchWatch.org) is a not-for-profit educational outreach program based at the University of Kansas. We run a Monarch tagging program and offer Monarch Rearing Kits, Monarch Tagging Kits, and other educational/promotional materials that allow you to actively experience the monarch life cycle and its spectacular fall migration.If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us anytime!
Your friends at Monarch Watch
http://www.MonarchWatch.org
monarch@ku.edu
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We are usually only able to visit the overwintering monarch colonies in Mexico when delivering materials on behalf of Adopt-a-Classroom each January. This year Monarch Watch's Director was able to get to the colonies a second time because he agreed to be a keynote speaker at an Entomological meeting in Guanajuato. A brief account of his trip (with photos) is now online at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/news/031102.html
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3) Tag Recoveries and Tag Recovery Fund
Thanks to those of you who contributed to the Tag Recovery Fund since the last update. We are pleased with the response and we extend our thanks to those of you who contributed to this fund. Your contributions will be acknowledged in the 2001 Season Summary (available this summer).
Since the update last month, we have recovered an unprecedented number of tags from the overwintering sites in Mexico. Through March 1st we purchased 1,232 tags (for a total of $6,844.00) from guides, transportistas (those who shuttle tourists to the colonies), families, and school boys who search among the dead butterflies for tags after school. The number of tags still available at the overwintering sites appears to be in excess of 1000. Since we have exceeded our budget for tags, we have only authorized Dave Kust to purchase another $3000.00 worth of tags (540 tags) which would bring the total for the year to 1772. (In our previous best year, we obtained 689 tags). These purchases will bring our total expenses for tags to $9,844. Thus far, we have raised $6,664.63 to cover these costs leaving us with a negative balance of $3179.37.
We hope that some of you will help us recover these costs by sending donations earmarked for the "Tag Recovery Fund" - this money goes directly to local people in Mexico whose average daily wage is about $10. This incentive gives them reason to value the butterflies and is providing all of us with an extraordinary amount of valuable information about the migration.
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If the weather is warm enough, some monarchs begin moving north the last week of February, a progressive northern exodus that can continue into April. The question now is how many monarchs remain to make the return migration this spring. This is a tough question but we will tell you what we know and don’t know.
According to Eligio Garcia’s measurements there were pre-storm measurements of 2.96 and 2.64 hectares of butterflies at Chincua and El Rosario respectively, approximately 60% of the total for all sites. The post storm estimates for these sites were .76 and .51 for a total of 1.27 hectares. Llano de Koalas which is also a site at Chincua contained 1.36 hectares of monarchs before the storm. This site is a bit lower and a larger proportion of the butterflies may have survived at this location but at this writing (7 march) there is no estimate for survivorship at this colony. The same can be said for the remaining colonies, all of which are relatively small. Las Canoas on Cerro Pelon is the largest (.98) of these colonies and three independent accounts suggest that the majority of monarchs in this colony survived the storm. Similarly, two parties have reported monarchs to be streaming up and down the mountain in the vicinity of the Herrada colony (.36 hectares). There is no information on San Andres (.52), an exposed colony with a low quality forest. Putting all this fragmentary information together, and making some sweeping assumptions, it appears that the remaining population is probably in the range of 2.5-3.5 hectares. This is better than we expected and it may be higher than the number of monarchs in all colonies last year at this time (2.83 hectares in January of 2001).
The bottom line is that there will be enough monarchs to recolonize the breeding areas this spring. Will the monarch population rebound as well this spring as it did last year? Maybe, but the conditions don’t look as favorable this year. We will have more to say about that next month.
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5) Spring Observations - Very Important
Due to the recent mortality of monarchs in Mexico, reports of the numbers of larvae and or adults in the springtime are critical in documenting long-term effects of this kind of event. There are several ways in which you can participate.
The Monarch Larva Monitoring Project
The MLMP is based at the University of Minnesota. In this "citizen science project" volunteers collect data on monarch and milkweed populations, and share their data with scientists and the public. The main participation requirement is an interest in monarch ecology and an enthusiasm for learning more! Volunteers choose a site with milkweed to monitor; sites may include backyards, gardens, natural areas, old fields, agricultural fields, or roadsides. Monitoring takes about 2-3 hours per week.
For questions, comments, or to sign up, contact Karen Oberhauser at karen@mlmp.org or visit http://www.mlmp.org/
Journey North
Journey North tracks the monarch migration each year by collecting sightings of the FIRST monarch butterfly an observer sees in the spring. A migration map is produced every week, providing a "live" snapshot of the migration as it progresses. In addition to reporting your first adult monarch, please report the first monarch eggs you see on milkweed. (When you see monarch eggs, you'll know monarchs have arrived in your region!)
To report first monarchs, please visit http://www.learner.org/cgi-bin/jnorth/jn-sightings
Dplex-L Email Discussion List
Reports of the migration by subscribers allow many students and teachers to follow the migration before, during and after their tagging. Many spectacular observations of the migration have been made by Monarch Watchers in previous years. Subscribers also post questions, provide useful tips and tricks on the use of Monarchs in classrooms and report news of meetings and conservation efforts. Following reports to the list is a good way to learn much more about Monarchs. Presently there are more than 500 subscribers from 11 countries on Dplex-L; however, we need more of you to join in, so...
To learn more about Dplex, please visit http://www.MonarchWatch.org/dplex
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New T-shirts!
As you know, we are always on the look out for new items to add to the selection in Gulliver’s Gift Shop and now we’ve come across 2 new t-shirt designs that we think you’ll love.
The ‘Butterflies of North America’ t-shirt has a colorful garden motif printed on the front and back of a heavyweight 100% cotton shirt. The spectacular images of North American butterflies moving among the flowers stands out against the natural cotton finish of the shirt.
The ‘Butterflies of the World’ t-shirt is printed in full color on a white, heavyweight 100% cotton tee. The front of the shirt has North and South American butterflies and the back shows butterflies from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. The butterflies are brilliantly silk-screened making them stand out from the white shirt.
Both shirts are on the opening page of our online storefront. We hope you like these new additions to Gulliver’s Gift Shop. Remember, each purchase helps support Monarch Watch.
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We are looking for "Monarch Crusaders" - students who are involved with tagging, rearing, research, education of others, butterfly gardening, or are otherwise passionate about monarch butterflies - for inclusion in the Season Summary. If you know of such a student, please send us a paragraph or two describing the student's activities and your relationship to the student along with a picture to us by snail mail or email. We are seeking to recognize enthusiastic students especially those that are self-motivated and show an initiative above and beyond their peers.
You can email your responses or questions to cwalters@ku.edu
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Do you work with monarchs or use monarchs in your classroom? If so, we want to hear from you!
We are looking for articles written about monarch research, student projects, experiences with monarchs, and monarchs in the classroom for inclusion on our website and possibly in our annual Season Summary. If you would like to submit something, please send it (photos are always a plus!) to Monarch Watch via email or snail mail and we will post it online with the next revision of our site.
If you have any questions about this, please feel free to drop us a line anytime at monarch@ku.edu
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New Site Design
The Monarch Watch website is quietly going through a long-overdue revision. Many of the changes that are being made are in response to the feedback that we have already received via the short feedback form at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/sitesurvey
Please take a moment let us know what you think about the current site and changes you feel need to be made. We will implement as many of your suggestions as possible and hope to have the new site online sometime before the fall.
Gulliver's Gift Shop
Monarch Watch is first and foremost an educational outreach program. Several years ago we began selling various promotional and educational items in an effort to generate additional financial support. As Monarch Watch has grown, the time necessary to maintain this aspect of the program has also grown; in fact, it now takes a large portion of two full-time positions to manage inventory, enter and fill orders, and provide customer support. Unfortunately, this is preventing us from accomplishing many of our education-oriented goals. Additionally, we simply cannot provide the level of service that today's web-savvy customers demand (quick order turnaround, regular phone support, etc.) - we just do not have the resources available to do this.
This dilemma was really the driving force behind our decision to partner with HomeEarth last summer. Out of this partnership "Gulliver's Gift Shop" was born, an online storefront (mail, phone, and fax orders are also taken) that carries all of our Monarch Watch items in addition to lots of other nature-related items. Everyone benefits from this relationship - we are able to offer more products that we could possibly do on our own, HomeEarth manages inventory, processes orders and payments, and will soon inventory and ship everything as well. "Monarch Watchers" will have more ordering, payment, and shipping options and also have access to regular customer support.
Right now it may be a little confusing since we are still taking orders as we always have and shipping all orders, even those placed via Gulliver's Gift Shop. We plan to phase out the order processing ourselves and turn all order processing and fulfillment over to HomeEarth. This will greatly simplify things and free up a lot of our time so that we can concentrate on our educational goals. We'd like to hear your thoughts on this and get a little feedback from those of you who have placed orders at Gulliver's Gift Shop.
Please take a few moments and submit your feedback via a short form at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/ggs_survey
If you would prefer to just send an email telling us what you think, please place "New Site Design" or "Gulliver's Gift Shop" in the subject and send it to
Thanks!
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10) How to Unsubscribe from this Update
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Thanks!
Monarch Watch
http://www.MonarchWatch.org
monarch@ku.edu
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Monarch Watch (888) TAGGING - or - (785) 864-4441
monarch@ku.edu