For immediate release:
August 17, 2011
Contact: Sarina Jepsen, Director, Endangered Species Program, Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation; 503-232-6639 ext. 112, sarina@xerces.org

PORTLAND, Ore. — In response to a petition from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and partners, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized today that Leona’s little blue butterfly may qualify for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

There is only one population of Leona’s little blue butterfly — found in the Antelope Desert in Klamath County, Oregon — known to exist in the world. This highly endemic species occupies a specialized niche on private timberland and a small part of the Winema National Forest.

“With only 2,000 individuals of this species remaining worldwide, a single event — such as a wildfire — could lead Leona’s little blue to extinction,” said Sarina Jepsen, Endangered Species Program Director of the Xerces Society. “Protection under the Endangered Species Act will provide a crucial safety net for this iconic species.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service affirmed in today’s finding that this small butterfly is threatened by catastrophic wildfire and encroaching conifers. The Service recognized that Leona’s little blue butterfly is inherently more vulnerable to stochastic events because of the small size of its population. Today’s finding triggers a twelve-month status review by Fish and Wildlife Service biologists; the result of that status review will be a decision whether or not to list the butterfly as an endangered species.

“Leona’s little blue butterfly can be considered an indicator of the health of the Antelope desert,” said Ani Kame’enui of Oregon Wild, a co-petitioner. “This butterfly may be small, but by protecting its critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act, we will safeguard an essential piece of wild Oregon.”

The trip is finished, and so are the blogs, but I wanted to provide a brief coda to bring it all back home. As you know, the Orion and Xerces blogs have carried different, complementary content all along, But for this little epilog, I’ve decided to send a single note to both sources, and to do it with electrons via Thea’s computer. Forgive me for not mailing any doodads or tree trunks or trash bits from the road this time. I came home to our biggest snow in thirty years, which melted and rained and blew into one of our biggest floods within just 48 hours, and the road to the post office has been blocked by deep, rushing water. So here, in conventional fashion, is a wrap-up to the whole deal:

The Christmas blizzard in Portland barely let me out of town, and Chicago was worse, with hundreds of stranded holiday evacuees still stashed and crashed around O’Hare wherever they could find prone space. Yet I made it to Fort Lauderdale only a day late, where the incomparable Alana Edwards picked me up. Alana and her mother Lana, bright lights in the Atala Chapter of NABA, made my valedictory trip to Florida possible. Alana had arranged permits and transportation, including the rangers’ boat to stilll-wild Lignum Vitae Key. For the next few days, we prowled hammocks and mangroves in the Glades and the Keys in search of butterflies I’d not yet encountered.

I had hoped to venture out to Dry Tortuga National Park, to see out the year in the most distal point of the U.S. However, time, expense, and the paucity of butterflies there all militated against a Tortugan finish. The next farthest place I could go, where I’d never been before and where exotic (=outlandish) species of butterflies drifted or blown in from Cuba or elsewhere in the Antilles are always possible, was Key West. Alana kindly and heroically fought the holiday traffic (early mornings helped) to get me there, with interim outings on several of the Keys. Well acquainted with the butterflies, the plants, and the places, and extraordinarily observant, Alana was the best of guides. Among other naturalists we met, resident butterflier, gardener, artist, and devoted conservationist Paula Cannon joined us, and led us to remnant habitats she’s worked hard to save. At her tranquil home on a quay in the Keys, Paula prepared and served us elegant, slender silver fish that she and her husband Gary had caught in local waters, with the wonderful name of look-down fish.

While only a few of the possible new species deigned to show up, they were very special ones: the brilliant Florida purplewing shining in dappled sunlight on Lignum Vitae; the endangered Miami blue, just one among hundreds of Cassius blues, on little Bahia Honda; and the bright, long-tailed Bartram’s hairstreak, which I’d been seeking off and on since early spring, right where we hoped it would be on Big Pine Key. We toasted them all with Florida ale (some the year’s last) at the notorious No Name Pub on tiny No Name Key. These rare butterflies have survived, maybe just, in spite of the over-zealous burning of pine rockland, mosquito spraying, and overall development of these overloved and undervalued islets. Horny hordes of Jurassic-looking iguanas throng the Keys, released and escaped and now all but in charge, skinning nickerbean and other butterfly host-plants from the thin coral soil. Hurricanes, too, have wiped habitats free of structure and diversity. But perversely, sea heliotrope has proliferated along the beach of Big Pine since Hurricane Wilma, attracting a spectacular showing of big, bright hammock and mangrove skippers, tropic queens, and Martial’s hairstreaks. We reveled in the waning year’s last butterfly throes. For me, anyway. Down here, they never stop.

Of course, I could have seen more novel species had I just remained in Texas: my friends in the Lower Rio Grande Valley spotted more than a dozen that would have been new for me within days of my departure. But then I would have missed Hawaii with Thea, Arctic Portland with our family, and this splendid immersion among these shimmering denizens of Old Florida, and those who love, study, and care for them and their besieged habitats. And has anyone else ever had the astonishing good fortune to seek butterflies on both Kaua’i and the Keys in the same week?

Masses of butterflies accompanied me down to Key West and all around it, and I enjoyed them fully, knowing they’d be the last, and have to last me, for a long time. Even greater masses of human beings filled the final Key for its noted New Year’s blast. I mostly managed to escape them, finding tucked-away habitats among the city’s nature reserves, ancient salt flats and the remoter fringes of Civil War-era Fort Zachary Taylor, where mangrove buckeyes flickered and hundreds of various yellows mocked the winter. But the most exciting butterfly–what a finish if it had lingered, instead of sailing away far over a condo!–appeared at a patch of Spanish needles in a vacant lot by a busy intersection: a mystery beauty that to my eyes most resembled a Hypanartia, or mapwing: a tropical genus recorded no nearer than Cuba or Veracruz.

Just east of the spot billed “as the southernmost point in the U.S.” lies South Beach–some ways southward of the one where diet came from. There, my feet in the sea, my butt on an algal-green coral slab, I watched the sun set on the year and the venture. When the last gulf fritillary, cloudless sulphur, and fiery skipper went to roost, I’d tallied 488 species, unofficially–489, if you count the mystery nymphalid that came and went over the Caribbean. The last sun of 2008 disappeared into a diffuse pink contrail from Havana, and that was that.

Of course I couldn’t quite escape the New Year’s craziness of Key West, from the drag diva named Sushi (another species of tropic queen) who descends in a big red high-heeled shoe at midnight, to the lightly clad legions promenading Duval Street in a viscous flow of sweat, skin, drink, and cigar smoke, all but impenetrable for an outlander with backpack and a butterfly net, complete with aluminum extendable handle. Pity I’d shed the tiki torch in Portland: it would have fit right in. I took refuge on the sofa of an Irish pub called Bogart’s until four A.M., when the bars closed, the human cacophony subsided, and the many feral roosters (just as in Hawai’i: here was the real link between Kaua’i and the Keys) began to crow. I recall a moment in there when an inebriated and pretty young blonde launched herself onto my lap with vigor, and another when a fellow leaned in from the street to insist that I was Ernest Hemingway resurrected. Those were the high points of an evening that suffered, on the whole, in contrast with that charmed week’s final field trips.

I found a tree in a secluded part of the fort with spreading roots that welcomed me for a couple of hours of sleep. And in the morning, after I’d mollified both the Navy folks and the State Park ranger who challenged my presence there, I discovered an isolated cove where I bathed, swam, and watched a great southern white fly off across the Straits of Florida. Then I greeted the New Year among a school of beautiful pipefish, their long, thin bills and tails the same color as the sea that stretched away toward far Tortuga.

***

I want to thank Hal Clifford and Scott Walker at Orion Magazine, and Sean Tenney and Sarina Jepsen at the Xerces Society, for their heroic stewardship of my motley materials to produce these weblogs of the first Butterfly Big Year; and for their generosity in sharing interlinks and this final entry between them. Especially, I am thankful to those of you who have read and followed along with me on this long strange trip in the charmed company of butterflies, or not. I hope what has come through more than anything is the sense of extreme privilege I have felt in spending a year of my life this way. I am deeply grateful to Orion and Xerces for allowing me to share it with you in this medium. There is much, much more to tell–but for that, you’ll just have to read the book. Happy New Year, and keep an eye out for butterflies in aught-nine,

Bob

Pair of iguanas, male above, on Big Pine Key. Photo by Paula Cannon.

Sponge Bob. Photo by Paula Cannon.

Male martial's hairstreak, whose larvae feed on bay cedar in southern Florida. Photo by Paula Cannon.

A pair of gulf fritillaries, male above, in courtship display. Photo by Paula Cannon.

Male Bartram's scrub hairstreak at Navy Wells. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Bob Pyle eye-to-eye with Bartram's scrub hairstreak. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Ranger Clark and Bob walking through the hammock at Lignum Vitae Key. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Florida purplewing on Lignum vitae Key. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Caterpillar tractor. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Leaving Lignum Vitae Key with park staff. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Mangrove skipper pupa. Photo by Alana Edwards.

No name pub. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Dorsal hammock skipper. Photo by Alana Edwards.

Paula Cannon, Bob Pyle and Alana Edwards.

RMP with Benton Basham of Tennessee and Weslaco, TX. Ben is a top birder and butterflier who has been extremely helpful to me. Photo by Jan Dauphin.

My dear friends of almost fifty years, Floyd and June Preston, and major field contributors to our knowledge of the U.S. butterfly fauna. Photo by Ben Basham.

A rare and pristine Gold-spotted Aguna, encountered at the NABA Butterfly Park. Photo by Ben Basham.

A fabulous fig sphinx moth (Pachylia ficus) found as a pupa in Weslaco, photo by Ben Basham.

Pitcher plants photographed at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station by Susan S. Borkin.

Susan Borkin photographed on the bog boardwalk at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station.

Bob Pyle on the Bog boardwalk at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station. Photo by Susan Borkin.
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Swamp metalmark larva photographed at Riveredge Nature Center, Ozaukee County WI by Susan S. Borkin.

Swamp metalmark adult photographed at Riveredge Nature Center, Ozaukee County WI by Susan S. Borkin.

Ann and Scott Swengel looking for karner blue eggs. Photo by Bob Pyle.

Bob Pyle looking for karner blue eggs. Photo by Ann and Scott Swengel.

Karner blue egg.

Bob Pyle and Ann Swengel at the Bauer Brockway Barrens. Photo by Scott Swengel.

Bob, in from the field, surrounded by feminine pulchritude and a motherlode of Florida butterfly expertise: Kathy Malone, Jackie Miller, and Alana Edwards, at the Bonefish Restaurant in Gainesville.

Unknown jumping spider on Carphephorus corymbosus. Photo by Linda Cooper.

Jack Shaw, Buck Cooper, Kay Eoff, Bob Pyle and Lucie Bruce with their binoculars focused on the first Loammi Skipper (Atrytonopsis loammi). Photo by Linda F. Cooper.

Bob pointing to Loammi skipper. Photo by Linda F. Cooper.

Loammi skipper. Photo by Linda F. Cooper.

The following is an entry written by Linda Cooper, Osceola County, Florida

Monday, October 20

10:15 a.m
The assignment was simple enough – find Loammi Skipper (Florida Dusted Skipper) – a ‘must see’ for Bob Pyle in his search for butterflies in Florida. His goal is high. He is looking for as many butterflies in the U. S.

as he can see in one year and it is already mid-October. He is taking pledges per species to raise money for butterfly conservation for The Xerces Society. We promised to help him in his search for this skipper in our neck of the woods. In a serendipitous moment we find Lucie Bruce, a Houston, TX butterfly enthusiast, has arrived at Bull Creek. She is invited to join Bob, Jack Shaw and Kay Eoff, who have driven from Gainesville, and Buck and me for a full day of walking wildflower fields. An extra pair of eyes is a great thing. We are wondering if we will see any butterflies today. The fields of Liatris and Carphephorus are fading fast. What had been filled with butterflies just nine days ago were largely devoid of activity in the cool morning.

Stiff breezes make following butterfly flight difficult but as the morning warms they begin to settle on the purple blossoms. The sharp-eyed Gainesville guys find the first Loammi – and then another. Soon we all begin to find them. One even had mismatched ventral hind wings with white smiley-face pattern on one side but mostly unpatterned on the other. Bob only needs to see one Loammi and we end up with ten! As we move farther along West Loop Road we find fresher Liatris and Ccarphephorus fields. Assorted swallowtails dance on the purple blossoms. Bob finds a Dotted Skipper, rarely seen so far south in the peninsula.

4:30 p.m
We finish up by driving north on Cemetery Road through water-filled mud holes. At the end of the road we walk around the old cemetery, reading headstones and markers, shaking shrubs looking for White M Hairsteak. No luck with this one.

5:15 p.m
Time to depart to meet Akers Pence in Melbourne for a quick dinner before he and Bob head south to search for tropical species. We end the day with 31 species and 249 individuals: life butterflies for most and an opportunity to spend the day with new and old friends in a beautiful area of old Florida.

So many butterflies…
so little time!

Bob and Thea Pyle plus Xerces charter member Dave McCorkle, Canopy Crane Site Director Ken Bible, and Research Scientist Matt Schroeder, in the crane’s gondola. Photo by Ray Davis, Wildlife Biologist for the Umqua National Forest.

Bob Pyle searching for Johnson’s hairstreak eggs and larvae in dwarf mistletoe 45 m up in old-growth western hemlock. Photo by Ray Davis.

Thea and Bob at the Wind River Canopy Crane at Carson, WA. Photo by Ray Davis.

McCorkle’s branded skipper. Photo by Ray Davis.