Santa Clarita and Northern Los Angeles County Area
Butterfly and Moth Site
lepidoptera-related Documents.
Lepidoptera Tracking and Tag Ledger (MS Excel)
Here is an MS Excel spreadsheet workbook for keeping track of your
specimens and printing labels. Specimen data is entered into a simple
1-line ledger format. The data for up to about 200 specimens is
automatically fed into a 10 x 20 label sheet, which can be printed as
needed. Once printed, the ledger entries are (manually) moved to another
sheet where they accumulate into a nice database of information, which
can be sorted by date (year, month or day), location, species, sex, etc.
The sheet is in Excel 95/97 format and should work any version of MS
Excel/Office 95 and later. (You must have a computer with MS Excel
installed to use this) The images below show the ledger (top image), the
label and label sheet layout, and an actual tag with coin and #3 pin for
scale (second row of images). Samples and instructions for use are
included in the sheet. It is Copyrighted but may be freely distributed
so long as the Copyright info is not removed.
Click the image below to download the zip file containing the spreadsheet...
Collecting in National Forest Areas (Memo)
There has been a lot of confusion as to where insect collecting is legal
and where it's not. Due to the wide range of government agencies and
massive bureauocracy involved, it's common for government employees who
are responsible for a given area to be unsure of the rules and so
erroneously dis-allow all collecting. Generally speaking, collecting in
any government (state, county, or national) park, wildlife refuge or
other protected area requires a permit from the responsible agency.
However, non-commercial insect collecting in National Forests IS allowed,
unless some special moritorium or other prohibition for a specific
forest area exists. The PDF document below contains the text from a
memo released in 1998 by the USDA, specifically directed to forest
rangers for their information. In every case I've mentioned collecting
in the forest to a ranger (in several states), they've been unaware of
it and have asked me for a copy. I now carry several printed copies of
it just in case!
