[Leps-l] Fw: NYTimes article on the NABA butterfly park

[Roger Kuhlman]

________________________________
From: Roger Kuhlman <rkuhlman at hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2022 1:11 AM
To: Dana, Robert (DNR) <robert.dana at state.mn.us>
Subject: Re: [Leps-l] NYTimes article on the NABA butterfly park

I would agree with the importance of natural fires and other natural events in maintaining good quality natural habitats in general. But I would point out that natural disturbances are beneficial when habitats are not badly fragmented and scarce. When fire happens with rare butterflies in a very restricted location with no nearby habitats of species recolonization, it is probably a lethalizing and extirpating event. When you have rare butterflies and other animals restricted to low numbers in a few scattered sites you have a prescription for relatively quick species extinction.

Roger Kuhlman
Ann Arbor, Michigan
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From: Leps-l <leps-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Dana, Robert (DNR) <robert.dana at state.mn.us>
Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 4:53 PM
To: Leps-L <leps-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Leps-l] NYTimes article on the NABA butterfly park


On a different topic, I tuned in to a Zoom presentation yesterday about insect conservation from the McGuire Center at the Univ. of Florida, one of the “Expanding Horizons in Lepidoptera Research” that it produces. The presenter was Erica Henry, now a post-doc at Washington State Univ. in Pullman. She presented three stories of work she has been involved in aimed at averting extirpation/extinction of butterfly taxa--Strymon acis bartrami, Neomympha mitchellii francisci, and Speyeria zerene hippolyta. All three are habitat specialists whose habitats we have nearly eliminated, with the remnant fragments widely scattered. A crucial aspect of the decline in these butterfly populations, besides the direct destruction of habitat, is the elimination of landscape-scale dynamics that produced and maintained these habitats. This is exactly the situation here facing the Dakota skipper (Hesperia dacotae) and Poweshiek skipperling (Oarisma poweshiek), both requiring native prairie habitat. At a general level, frequent fire, episodic grazing, and climate interacted to create this biome, and the extreme fragmentation of what remains eliminates the first two as natural processes. Maintaining the remnants as anything like the native prairie requires active management to apply fire and grazing, but just what the prescription needs to be for these two butterflies to persist in remnants remains largely undetermined. Fortunately in the case of Dr. Henry’s three species, the most important factor for them is the presence of their hostplants, and enough is known about the requirements of the plants to guide management strategies. Our two skippers do not appear to depend on specific hosts within the Poaceae, making the task more challenging. Anyone interested in doing some research?



Robert Dana


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