Texas Monarch Monitoring Workshop to be Held this Spring
March 4, 2010
Tom Harvey, 512-389-4453, tom.harvey@tpwd.texas.gov
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BOERNE — Volunteers from the Texas Monarch Watch, Cibolo Nature Center and Texas Master Naturalists are offering a Monarch Monitoring Workshop on April 9-10. The workshop is designed to train volunteers to aid scientists as part of the Monarch Larval Monitoring Project, Monarch Watch and Journey North. The monarch’s overwintering population in Mexico is the lowest ever recorded, and the butterfly was recently added to the World Wildlife Fund’s Top 10 Most Threatened Species list.
The workshop will instruct teachers, youth leaders, citizen scientists and park naturalists across the state on how to monitor monarch butterflies at their local sites. Participants will learn how to mark migrating monarchs with paper tags, examine milkweed for monarch larvae and collaborate with international monarch research.
The monarch is probably the best known of all North American butterflies. The species is famous for its mass migration south for the winter, where populations will overwinter in various sites in Mexico and southern California.
The workshop will be held at the Cibolo Nature Center auditorium on Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. Training costs $30 per person and is approved credit for Texas Master Naturalists.