Data and Privacy Policy

The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper gathers and shares information about monarch and milkweed species’ distributions and abundances across the western United States. By downloading or consulting data from this website, the user acknowledges that he/she agrees to the following policies.

Privacy Policy

Submitted Information

Your personal information is voluntarily supplied by you when you register and submit data to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper. By registering, you allow us to associate your monarch and milkweed records with a unique identifier (login name or your name) to enable you to track and download your records and build your unique, virtual milkweed and monarch collection. If you submit unusual records, we may request more details by email, but your email address and contact information will not be sold or distributed outside of the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper. Profile Information allows us to improve the website for Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper users in a more informed way.

Milkweed and monarch records are the most important pieces of information that we collect. All details of an observation and its associated location are available to all users registered with the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper. Only information pertaining to these observations is available to Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper users; no personal contact information is ever made public.

Photo Copyright

Copyright for all photo vouchers submitted to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper remain with the photographer and are covered by US Copyright Laws. Please contact the individual user/photographer if you wish to use any photograph from this website. If submitting or posting another photographer’s photos to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper or elsewhere, you should have permission to do so. We will remove photographs if we are informed that appropriate permissions for their use on the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper have not been obtained, or in case of disputes. Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper administrators are not able to manually check the validity of copyright for every posted photograph.

Disclaimers

Site Content

While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate information on the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper website, the Xerces Society, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife specifically disclaim all legal liability with respect to the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information contained in this website. We assume no legal liability for any damages, including direct, indirect, consequential, compensatory, special, punitive, or incidental damages arising from or relating to the use of the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper or the information and materials provided by or linked from the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper.

Some pages on this website provide links to external sites. We are not responsible for the availability or content of these external sites, nor do we endorse or warrant the products, services or information described or offered by these sites.

Injury Liability

As a monarch and milkweed observer, you are fully responsible for your own safety and personal insurance in case of injury. The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper shall not be liable for damages or injuries you may incur while observing monarchs and milkweeds, whether personally or for the purpose of submission to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper database. Please exercise great caution and care in the field when collecting data, including maintaining awareness of your surroundings and of others who are in the field with you. Do not venture onto private property without full and informed consent of landowners. Inclusion of children in monarch and milkweed data collection activities should involve full and appropriate supervision by responsible caregivers.

Data Access Policy

The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper encourages researchers and other data users to disseminate findings in appropriate publications, based in whole or in part on Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper data. Data users will give appropriate credit to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper for its contribution(s) to the publication of such findings. All publication(s) or product(s) using any Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper data are requested to adhere to this policy.

Redistribution of the data

Without specific approval, no data provided by Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper can be distributed beyond the researchers/authors/users using the data. Raw data should not be made available for download through the Internet, but derived data (maps, tables) are usually acceptable. If you plan to present Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper data on the Internet, please get in touch with us first.

Citation

If data are extracted from this database for use in publications or other projects, the data should be cited as follows:

Western Monarch and Milkweed Occurrence Database. 2018. Data accessed from the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper, a project by the Xerces Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Available: www.monarchmilkweedmapper.org. Accessed: [DATE].

When referencing other information from the website, such as the milkweed profiles, please use the following citation:

Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper. 2018. A project by the Xerces Society, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Available: www.monarchmilkweedmapper.org. Accessed: [DATE].

If WMMM data constitute a substantial proportion of the records used in analyses (i.e. more than 25% of the data are derived from this source, or the data are essential to arrive at the conclusion of the analysis), the database managers should be contacted. It may be useful to contact us directly in case there are additional data that may strengthen the analysis or there are features of the data that are important to consider but may not have been apparent from the metadata.

If data downloads include proposed research with significant Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper staff contributions, then agreement on the role of involved staff, joint authorship, and order of authors on publications must be reached before the project moves forward.

In addition, we require that the following statement be included in the acknowledgement section of any publication:

We thank the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper and its many participants for collecting and supplying data.

If data retrieved from the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper are to be used for web-based products (maps, summaries, etc.), you must contact us for instructions on applicable contributor/partner logo(s) and website link(s).

Copyright

The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper and its partners retain the copyright on all data provided to researchers/authors/users, unless the copyright has been legally transferred to a client. The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper concept is copyright by The Xerces Society.

Revocation of Privileges

Any researcher/author/user not abiding by the above policies may forfeit any future access to the Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper data.