2013 Field work summary

A few weeks ago the field data was submitted to and accepted by the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program. This agency manages all the rare species records for the entire Commonwealth.

Below is a map showing all the survey site locations for this project. We covered a lot of terrain and I'm proud of what this project was able to accomplish. Overall we visited 40 wetland habitats in search of the Jefferson Salamander, we were successful in locating breeding populations in 15 of these sites.

Project funding.
This turned out to be a successful experiment in crowd sourcing money for a worthwhile field conservation project. Below is a breakdown of the budget, funding, and man hours put into this project.

Project Time sheet  

	Tim	Patrick	Ben
4/16/2013	12			field survey day
4/17/2013	12			field survey day
4/22/2013	5			field survey day
4/23/2013	10	10		field survey day
4/24/2013	10			field survey day
4/25/2013	11			field survey day
4/26/2013	10		10	field survey day
Spring-Summer	40			Data management, report writing, website updating
total hours	110	10	10

Expense report

expenses		$$$
Gas+ tolls	Boston to Berkshires a few times	140
Patrick Zephyr	Photographs: seven 8x12 photos + shipping	350
hotel	4/16/2013	58
Food expenses		140
Ben Jaffe	travel stipend	60
car repair	wheel bearing replacement (see blog story)	250
materials	GPS batteries, etc.	30
	total expenses	1028

Budget: in the final 24 hours it appeared that I wasn't going to make the $3500 goal by the deadline. Kickstarter will not let you donate to your own project so my girlfriend volunteered to loan me the difference in order to make the campaign a success. 

Kickstarter after fees	$3181.52
Carolyn loan (to make goal)	$1090
KS remainder	$2091.52
Total profit after expenses	$1063.52
Hourly rate before taxes (Tim's 110 hours) for field work, data management, data reporting	$9.67 per hour

*historic reference: Massachusetts, Minimum wage 8.00 USD per hour (January 1, 2012)

I didn't go into this project expecting to make a huge profit but I am grateful to have made enough to cover my expenses and have a small budget to buy some new equipment for next season. Again, thanks to everyone who supported the Kickstarter campaign and a special thanks to George and Iin Cox for providing me with a gorgeous place to live for the week I spent in the Berkshires. This was my first time blogging a field project and found it to be a rewarding experience.