Monarch Watch Update - August 17, 2001
http://www.MonarchWatch.org
monarch@ku.edu
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Contents:
1) Welcome!
2) Email Update...Update ;-)
3) Thank You Kaidan
4) 2001 Tagging Kits: Going, going...
5) Amazon.com and CafePress Affiliations
6) Monarch Watch Funding
7) Price Increases
8) Home Earth
9) Website Survey Update
10) 2000 Season Summary
11) Fall Monarch Population and Migration
12) 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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2) Email Update...Update ;-)
This email update list has been *very* well received and is currently
delivered to over 5,000 recipients all over the world - wow!
Furthermore, it looks like we are adding more than a dozen or so
email addresses a day...that's a lot of Monarch Watchers!
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3) Thank You Kaidan
A big THANK YOU goes out to Kaidan Inc. - the company has recently
donated some photographic VR equipment to Monarch Watch. This
equipment will allow us to use our digital camera to produce
high-quality panoramas and/or QTVR movies to add to the educational
offerings currently on our website. We have great plans for this
equipment, including lots of "scenes" during our next
Adopt-a-Classroom (http://www.monarchwatch.org/conserve/adopt.htm)
trip to the schools near the Monarch Reserve in Mexico.
Check out the Panorama Gallery on Kaidan's site at
http://www.kaidan.com/products/pano-gallery.html
to see what we can do and if you have suggestions for panoramas you'd
like to see on our site, please let us know!
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4) 2001 Tagging Kits: Going, going...
We are currently shipping the 2001 Tagging Kits and the tags are
going fast! We have already received orders for 190,000 of the
250,000 tags available this year. In order to accommodate everyone
that wants to participate in the tagging program this fall, we will
begin limiting the number of tags per order to 25 - this would
consist of a Tagging Membership or Tagging Kit; additional sets of
tags will no longer be available.
Why only 250,000 tags? Given our current financial situation (and in
turn, our limited staff) we simply do not have the resources to
process a larger number of tags at this time.
If you haven't ordered your tags yet, head on over to
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/order
and get them today!
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5) Amazon.com and CafePress Affiliations
It seems a lot of people are using the links on our site when they
want to purchase something at Amazon. Last quarter a total of $750.75
was spent on books, music, videos, games, and more through our
"Amazon.com Portal" at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/amazon
As a result, Monarch Watch received our first check from Amazon in
the amount of $45.54 (5-15% of the total purchase price) - thanks! I
plan on posting links to items that have been purchased by "Monarch
Watchers" and may also include a "recommended by Monarch Watchers"
page on our site to include links based on your suggestions - what do
you think? This will allow Monarch Watchers easy access to items of
interest and Monarch Watch will receive 15% of any purchases made via
these direct links (vs 5% via our general link to Amazon.com).
Remember to keep us in mind when you need to shop at Amazon.com!
Similarly, Monarch Watch has accrued a "commission" of $51.00 through
your purchases of Monarch Watch mugs and t-shirts at our CafePress
store. We have received several requests/suggestions for images to be
placed on sweatshirts, t-shirts, mugs, mousepads, tank tops, boxers,
baseball caps, bucket hats and tote bags and we will create these
items just as soon as we can!
Visit http://www.MonarchWatch.org/cafepress for complete details.
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6) Monarch Watch Funding
We don't want to sound like a broken record, but with all of the new
subscribers to this Update List we really need to keep publishing
this message. We know there are sources of funding out there and hope
that someone receiving this update will "know someone who knows
someone" that will be able to match us up with the funding that we
need to continue our mission of education, conservation and research.
As many of you now know, Monarch Watch continues to be financially
challenged. We are just scraping by and are still searching for
corporate or foundation support. Due to a shortfall in income we are
attempting to enlarge our base of support through collaborative
arrangements with other organizations. Any leads for potential
sources of funding you can provide will be greatly appreciated!
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7) Price Increases
Due to the lack of substantial funding and the fact that our
overnight shipping costs have nearly tripled without warning we are
forced to increase the prices of our educational and promotional
items. :-( The new pricing will take effect immediately (as soon as
we settle on the increase); however, we will continue to accept 2001
order forms through the end of this year. We should have more
information for you in the next update.
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8) Home Earth
We are getting closer to opening the new online storefront,
tentatively named "Gulliver's Gift Shop" after our very own little
logopillar :-) As soon as this new venture is launched we'll let you
know - you can also expect a special offer via this update list ;-)
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9) Website Survey Update
As of 8 August, we have received 74 survey submissions, which means
more than a few of you haven't visited the survey page yet ;-) The
averages of the numeric scores (out of 10) are as follows: Overall
8.9; Navigation 8.4; Design 8.1; and Content 9.0. The feedback is
overwhelmingly positive and a lot of great suggestions have been made
- keep 'em coming!
Please take 5 minutes to fill out our short survey at
http://www.MonarchWatch.org/sitesurvey/
or send an email message with your feedback and/or suggestions to our
webmaster at
jlovett@ku.edu
Thanks again!
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10) 2000 Season Summary
Thank you for your patience with us! The day-to-day maintenance of
Monarch Watch seems to be taking up a *lot* more of our time lately.
We all wear many hats around here and are always working on several
"mission-critical" projects at the same time, so things take a little
longer to complete than we would like. We still anticipate that the
Season Summary will be mailed out next month and when we have a firm
date we will let you know.
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11) Fall Monarch Population and Migration
Although the number of monarchs at the overwintering sites in Mexico
last winter was the lowest yet to be recorded (28.3 million) and the
number of females that survived to reproduce this spring in the
southern states was quite low, the monarch population appears to have
made a remarkable recovery over the last 5 months. Reports from
throughout the breeding range indicate the migratory population this
fall will be much larger than that of 2000 and it may exceed the
population in 1999 and perhaps even the population in 1997. In recent
days large numbers of clustered monarchs have been reported from
Winnipeg, northern Michigan and west central Wisconsin. The
butterflies in Winnipeg should have already begun moving southward
and the migration will begin in areas north of 45 degrees in the next
week.
If you want to determine the approximate time for the migration to
begin in your area, visit http://susdesign.com/sunangle/. Follow the
instructions on the site and enter your latitude, date, time
(12:01PM), and time zone (for the central time zone use "F"
(GMT+6:00)) and time basis (solar). If you don't know your latitude,
go to http://www.indo.com/distance/ and type in the name of the
nearest city. For example, for Winnipeg (49:54 N) the altitude angle
for today (17 August) is 53.76 degrees.
Generally, the migration starts close to when the AA reaches 56
degrees and peaks when the AA reaches 52 degrees. Most monarchs leave
a particular latitude by the time the AA of the receding fall sun has
reached 47 degrees. The interval, or migration window, defined by
56-47 is about 3.5 weeks. For example, in Lawrence, KS the first wave
of the migration usually arrives on the 10-11th of September and the
peak is near the 20th (AA = 52.39) with all but the last few migrants
gone by the 4th of October (AA = 46.95).
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12) How to Unsubscribe from this Update
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mailing list, please send an email message to
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UNSUBSCRIBE MONARCH-WATCH-UPDATE
If you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Thanks!
Monarch Watch
http://www.MonarchWatch.org
monarch@ku.edu