From: grmerrick@shaw.ca   
      
   The Last Butterflies?   
      
   If the Trump administration weakens the Endangered Species Act, many   
   populations that are already dwindling will disappear   
      
       By Nick Haddad on September 19, 2019   
      
   The Last Butterflies?   
   Bartram's scrub-hairstreak butterfly.  No individual of this species   
   has been seen since Hurricane Irma struck South Florida in 2017.   
   Credit: Holly Salvato Flickr (CC BY 2.0)   
      
   A recent U.N. panel on biodiversity reported that there are one   
   million species currently threatened with extinction. Most of those   
   are the insects that make up two-thirds of the earth’s species. What   
   we know about these vanishing insects is largely informed by   
   scientific studies that show the alarming, decades-long decline of   
   butterflies, including those listed under the Endangered Species Act.   
      
   As a conservation biologist, studying these butterflies has been my   
   life’s work, and I am deeply troubled by the disastrous modifications   
   to the Endangered Species Act recently announced by the Trump   
   administration. Indeed, the changes could jeopardize one of the act’s   
   signature successes: that no listed butterfly has yet gone extinct.   
      
   I began studying rare butterflies when I was a junior professor in   
   2001. At that time, government agencies and conservation organizations   
   were struggling to develop conservation plans for an endangered   
   butterfly, the St. Francis’ satyr (Neonympha mitchellii francisci).   
   They asked me to bring my expertise to the effort and I   
   enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. As a naive overoptimist, I   
   thought that my scientific expertise was just the ingredient needed to   
   promote the insect’s rapid recovery.   
      
   On starting my research, my first course of action seemed obvious and   
   I kept people out of the St. Francis’ satyr’s habitats. This was not   
   hard to do, as the butterfly lives in the mucky wetlands of the Fort   
   Bragg army installation in North Carolina, alongside streams that few   
   humans ever enter.   
      
   In 2005 I observed the loss of one St. Francis’ satyr population. I   
   chalked this up to natural loss that could be offset by gains   
   elsewhere. Then there followed losses in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010.   
   There were no gains. By 2011 there remained only one population of St.   
   Francis’ satyr for me to study.   
      
   I was alarmed, but took some comfort knowing that there was another   
   set of populations that lived in an unlikely refuge: the artillery   
   range. Because of daily bombardment with heavy artillery, the U.S.   
   Army strictly prohibited access to these areas. But they made an   
   exception for me, on behalf of these butterflies.   
      
   As I entered for the first time, I was astonished to observe a great   
   paradox about artillery ranges. They were the opposite of the   
   moonscape I expected. The forests and wetlands were astounding. During   
   that first visit, I observed the largest populations of St. Francis’   
   satyrs that I had ever seen.   
      
   The butterfly’s habitat requires fire to keep the trees at bay, and   
   beaver to create new wetlands. Counterintuitively, the intense and   
   frequent disturbances caused by artillery were not, after all, harmful   
   to the butterflies. Quite the opposite: projectiles, flares and   
   machine-gun bullets ignited fires and simulated the natural   
   disturbance that kept their wetlands open and grassy.   
      
   Witnessing this forced me to admit that nearly every measure I had   
   taken to conserve the habitat of the St. Francis’ satyr outside the   
   artillery ranges had been wrong. My lab’s actions had protected the   
   butterflies from direct harm. But by doing as little as possible, we   
   were, in fact, pushing the butterflies closer to extinction. If the   
   artillery ranges did not exist, the butterfly would be extinct today.   
      
   So I set a new course in our restoration efforts. In a small area   
   about the length of a football field, we created temporary dams to   
   flood wetlands and hauled out trees to let in sunlight. Soon   
   afterward, the butterfly populations rose to hundreds of individuals,   
   representing about a quarter of the worldwide population of St.   
   Francis’ satyr. The Endangered Species Act had inspired a partnership   
   between the army, scientists, and conservation agencies that was   
   essential to supporting this butterfly’s recovery.   
      
   Like the St. Francis’ satyr, the 25 butterfly species that are   
   currently listed as Threatened or Endangered under the act have   
   already descended to the verge of extinction. Their numbers are so   
   small that if you gathered up all the living individuals of any of   
   particular species, such as the world’s 3,000 St. Francis’ satyrs, you   
   could hold every one of them in your two hands. Threatened species are   
   no different. The act is the only thing keeping them from extinction.   
   https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-last-butterflies/   
      
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