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| I saw a post about this outfit on Facebook. It was a link to the group's webpage about the El Segundo Blue Butterfly. So after looking at that, I poked around their website. Ended up finding out about a butterfly habitat that was created a couple hours from my house. It is 10 acres of restored prairie that opened in 2005. Now I have something else to do this summer.
The website does not seem to be very up-to-date. I was starting to wonder if the outfit had gone under. Then I found 2012 grant proposals so they are still kicking. Anyway, I'm posting it so maybe someone else will discover a butterfly recovery project that is near them. KC |
Here is a link that might be useful: The Butterfly Conservation Initiative
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by larry_gene zone9-OregonPDX (My Page) on Wed, Feb 15, 12 at 0:03
| Specifically, the "Species Profiles" link at that website will take you to local projects. Here in Oregon, the Fender's Blue and Oregon Silverspot are featured in the newspaper on an annual basis. I believe a dog was trained to sniff out Kinkaid's Lupine plants (Fender' Blue hostplant) in the open prairie, saving the human researchers much time. |
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| The local project I found was via the "Read about recovery" link. The project was not aimed at a specific species, but restoring butterfly habitat. |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Thu, Feb 16, 12 at 11:41
| Sounds like a good place to visit KC. Take your camera. There may be plants you will want to id so you can add them to your garden. I didn't find anything for Missouri on that website but we do have prairies I could visit within a couple hours. I've just never gotten around to going. Wow! How smart is that to teach a dog to sniff out Lupine. |
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| Christie, Your job is to make sure the ozark swallowtails (Papilio joanae) population stays large enough that BCI does not need to get involved. I'll call it CCI (Christie Conservation Initiative). You have been chosen. ;) I recently bought a book titled "Wild Ohio: The Best of Our Natural Heritage." You know it is a good book since it has a luna moth on the cover. ;) Anyway, it talks about how Ohio was much hotter and drier 4-8 thousand years ago. Because of this, prairies of the Great Plains expanded into Ohio. By the time the European settlements moved into Ohio, prairies covered "an estimated fifteen hundred square miles." Book says less than 1% of that is left today. Development took most of it but man preventing prairie fires allows trees to take over prairies too. If you want a prairie, you need to cut it down and/or set controlled fires. Real prairie plants have deep roots that are unaffected by fire. KC |
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- Posted by christie_sw_mo Z6 (My Page) on Fri, Feb 17, 12 at 9:02
| KC - I hope people don't start emailing me for information about the CCI now. lol I wouldn't know much about Ozark Swallowtails. I haven't been able to determine whether I have them here. They look too much like Black Swallowtails. ButterfliesandMoths.org says "black pupil in eyespot trailing edge of hindwing is not centered and touches inner edge of windwing". I do see one occasionally that has the black dot over to the side like that but maybe Black Swallowtails do too sometimes. If I AM seeing Ozark Swallowtails then they are using my Bronze Fennel for a host plant which is not listed as a host. I winter sowed some Yellow pimpernel (taenidia integerrima) seeds which IS listed as a host plant. But I bet Black Swallowtails will use it too. Wish there was an easier way to tell them apart. |
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| Can I get an assignment, too, KC? :) I grow milkweeds of various species for the monarchs, and fennel and parsley for the black swallowtails, (plus nectar sources for all) but I would love a specific assignment! |
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- Posted by misssherry Z8/9MS (My Page) on Fri, Feb 17, 12 at 17:25
| Good work! I'm going to order some more members of the laurel family to try to see if they'll thrive here, and, hopefully, palamedes swallowtails will lay eggs on one of them. I also plan to try and take some cuttings from my best, healthiest Persia tree - I don't know if it's P. palustris or P. borbonia, but it has the fewest galls of any on this property. Laurel wilt could possibly decimate the host plants for palamedes swallowtails, possibly even spicebush swallowtails. If there is a laurel that the vectoring insect - ambrosia wasp, I think, a non-native, of course - doesn't like, but the swallowtails do like, we need it! Sherry |
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