HEARTWOOD CHAPTER

I recently attended the Texas Monarch Training workshop in Boerne, Texas.

The workshop was held at the Cibolo Nature Center.

In addition to general information about Monarch butterflies, current status of population decline, habitat destruction and migration, participants learned about four Monarch citizen science projects.

These 4 Monarch projects discussed were:

1.  Journey North
        used to report first sightings of Monarchs and track their migration north.
2.  Monarch Watch
        involves creating Monarch waystations and Monarch tagging
3.  Monarch Larva Monitoring Program
        monitor a milkweed field, eggs, caterpillar, etc and report statistics
4.  Monarch Health
        test Monarch for OE infections

These citizen science projects collect valuable data which is used in monitoring the current health of the Monarch butterfly population.

Included in workshop were guest lectures and breakout sessions, including a walk to the Cibolo Nature Center Monarch Larva Monitoring field.  Additional Field trips the second day gave participants invaluable hands-on and field experience during trips to a local farm and to Guadalupe State Park.

The training is outstanding and I highly recommend attending this workshop if you are interested in working with Monarch butterflies and utilizing this icon species to help others learn about nature.

Presenters were Nationally known Monarch experts and Texas experts on the Monarch butterfly.  This included Dr. Karen Oberhauser, Dr. Priya Shashani, Carol Cullar, Dr. Kip Kiphart, Mary Kennedy and Mike Quinn.

If you would like more information on my experience at this workshop or would like to join me in spear heading a local project in the North Houston area, please let me know.

Linda C.