Thank you to the Association for Butterflies (AFB ) – and all the people that I met when I attended your Convention in Townsend, Tennessee and the members who did not attend, also the Board Members who voted to send the Monarch Alert Program this donation in time for this Season.

As the only major financial sponsor for the Monarch Alert Program in Monterey County since year 2001, I had long since decided that until we had more name recognition and received donations to support and could hire someone specifically to write grants for the program, I was it.

What an honor that an, East of the Rockies, Professional Butterfly Breeders Association would be the first to recognize that what we are doing for Monarchs is worth supporting!

With Dr. Louie Yang at U.C. Davis with his own lab already built and equipped to analyze Western Monarch butterfly samples for Stable Isotopes in order to further pinpoint migratory pathways for Monarchs, in the West, and which provides more rapid and efficient data results, than relying on less than 1% recovery of tagged Monarchs to try to do the same thing. Dr. Villablanca can take off this particular item from his future research ”Wish List’ and it may be possible to be started with in the next year.

As donors, you will be kept informed of how your money is being used and why it is so welcome and APPRECIATED. What a great surprise!

Helen Johnson

Helen supports the data collection (counting and tagging in the field) coordinated by Cal Poly Graduate Students and affiliated biologists.  She also supports outreach and educational work at the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary, the Pacific Grove Natural History Museum, and other important monarch sites in Monterey County.