Oregon Zoo, Washington biologists aid endangered butterfly species with release of hundreds of caterpillars -- science

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A Taylor's checkerspot butterfly rests on a paintbrush plant in the Oregon Zoo's butterfly lab. Zoo staff and Washington state biologists recently released more than 500 Taylor's checkerspot caterpillars in central Washington prairies as part of conservation efforts to save the endangered species.

(Melinda Holland/Oregon Zoo)

Update: Information about the contributions of Coffee Creek Correctional Facility inmates to this conservation effort has been added.

Rouse and release -- that's what Oregon Zoo staff and Washington state biologists have done with hundreds of juvenile endangered butterflies.

More than 500 Taylor's checkerspot caterpillars were woken from their winter dormancy in February and reared in the zoo's butterfly conservation lab before being released in central Washington more than a week ago.

The caterpillars were released in prairie areas that contain some of the Northwest's prime checkerspot habitat. They will continue their development in the wild, forming chrysalises before emerging as mature butterflies.

Once abundant in lowland grasslands west of the Cascades from Oregon to Canada's Vancouver Island, more than 99 percent of checkerspot habitat has been lost to agriculture and urban development, according to The Xerces Society. As such, the species, Euphydryas editha taylori, is listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Xerces Society, a Portland-based nonprofit organization focused on invertebrate conservation, describes the Taylor's checkerspot as "critically imperiled" and being in "imminent danger of going extinct."

Taylor's checkerspot caterpillars dine on narrowleaf plantain in the Oregon Zoo's butterfly lab shortly after awakening. Hundreds of them were subsequently released in central Washington.

The zoo has helped raise 19,000 checkerspots for release since 2004 in an effort to increase the species' numbers in the wild. Meanwhile, inmates at Oregon correctional facilities, including Coffee Creek in Wilsonville, have been growing plants used in restoration efforts for a number of endangered species. Kris LaMar, a Master Gardener and volunteer who teaches gardening at Coffee Creek, said inmates were involved in providing plants that the zoo used with the butterflies.

For more information about the zoo's conservation efforts with the checkerspots and other species, go to the zoo's Web page about fighting extinction in the Northwest. For more information about the Taylor's checkerspot in Oregon, go to the federal Fish and Wildlife Service's Oregon page on the species. To learn more about the factors at play in populations that can spur extinctions, check out the "Minimum viable population size" section on MarineBio.org's Conservation Biology page.

Meanwhile, the Taylor's checkerspot is not the only butterfly species for which there are concerns in terms of species survival. Despite a slight increase in numbers this past winter, populations of the iconic orange-and-black monarch butterflies of North America have declined enough since 1990 that FWS is considering a petition to list them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, with a decision due in August. Xerces Society and partner NatureServe earlier this month released an assessment of the monarchs, finding them vulnerable to extinction.

-- Susannah L. Bodman, sbodman@oregonian.com, www.facebook.com/Sciwhat.Science, Twitter: @Sciwhat

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