On September 11-13th, a team of National Park Service staff, volunteers, and myself as the LHIP Science Communications and Resource Monitoring intern surveyed the Green River for Monarch butterflies at all life stages. We floated from the Gates of Lodore (River Mille 243) to Split Mountain Boat Ramp (...
At Dinosaur I've had the great fortune of participating in numerous opportunities. I can now say that I've drawn blood from a Prairie Dog and tagged a Monarch. Yet, electrofishing was by far one of the most interesting experiences I've had, especially since it tested...
Prairie dogs (Cynomys leucurus) are a common sight throughout the West. You can find them in your yard or tearing up your field. They're almost as common as squirrels or raccoons. However, in their natural habitat, their lives are much more difficult. From fending...
Well, I finally made it to Dinosaur! Before I get ahead of myself, I am Luis Garcia Falcon. I am a passionate outdoors person, nature photographer, and advocate for preserving our natural treasures. This summer I will be continuing the Monarch project and doing...
On the last day of my LHIP internship at Dinosaur National Monument, I want to share some of the results of my work on monarch butterflies. First, in my field work this summer and fall, I saw around 300 adult monarchs. These high numbers have...
Throughout my internship experience researching monarch butterflies, I have been trying to encourage people to become monarch butterfly citizen scientists. A citizen scientist is someone who isn’t a professional scientists but can still contribute to important research. In the case of monarch research, citizens can...
During my internship, Dinosaur has caught and tagged 150 monarch butterflies. (Pictured is a mosaic of pictures of most of our tagged monarchs). Out of those 150 catches, some stick in my memory as particularly special. Without further ado, here’s the list of the five...
I recently administered a monarch butterfly school field trip at Dinosaur for middle school students from nearby Vernal, Utah. On the day of the field trip, I arrived with colleagues to the Josie’s Cabin area a little before 7:30. On this early morning, the goal...
While rafting on the Green River last week, I continued the tasks I have been working on all summer: surveying for monarch butterfly habitat and tagging adult butterflies. Surveying for habitat meant recording the presence and approximate number of milkweed plants along each river mile....
Last week, I was lucky enough to be a participant on a big horn sheep and monarch butterfly biological survey trip on the Green River. Since the stunning and dramatic canyons of the Green are hardly accessible on day trips or by car, we needed...
Over Labor Day weekend, I helped out and attended events at “Dark Skies over Dinosaur,” a multi-day stargazing/astronomy/night sky festival celebrating Dinosaur’s recent designation as an International Dark Sky Park. To earn recognition as a Dark Sky Park, Dinosaur has had to prove that it...
Along with tagging monarch butterflies to study their migration paths, in my internship I am also conducting field surveys for milkweed, monarch butterfly eggs, and monarch caterpillars. I send my data to both the Southwest Monarch Study and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. USFWS...
As much as butterflies need flowers and their nectar for food, flowers also need butterflies and other animals for pollination. I’ve caught monarchs off of flowers and seen their bodies covered with a thin dust that’s ready to be deposited on another flower. It’s cool...
Now that I have a few weeks of butterfly field work experience under my belt, I am beginning to spread my wings (butterfly pun sincerely intended) to conduct field work in areas outside of my main field site in Dinosaur National Monument. Since little is...
I recently had the chance to join Dinosaur National Monument staff in welcoming the Preserve America Youth Summit program to the Monument. The participants in the Youth Summit were middle and high school students from the Denver area who traveled to Dinosaur for two days...
On August 10, I helped with the Monarch Butterfly Habitat Hike and Tagging Workshop at Josie’s Cabin in Dinosaur National Monument. This event was intended to teach participants about monarch ecology and conservation, show people how we do monarch research, and gather lots of data....
I began working at Dinosaur National Monument last week as the resource monitoring and science communication intern. My objective for this internship is to contribute to monarch butterfly research and to communicate this information with the general public. After spending my first two days getting...
I arrived over the weekend to Dinosaur National Monument in preparation for my work as the Resource Monitoring and Science Communication Intern. In my first week at Dinosaur, I have enjoyed seeing different parts of the monument while being trained for my internship work. I’m...
Latino Conservation Week is about promoting conservation efforts in communities and showing support for the protection of our environment. To celebrate Latino Conservation Week in this blog, I’m going to step away from monarch butterflies at Dinosaur National Monument and share some of what I...
I will be starting my LHIP internship at Dinosaur National Monument in a little less than two weeks. I found out I would be doing this internship back in March so I have had several months to look ahead to this summer. Finally, I am...