**Podcast on Endangered Butterflies and Endangered Plants (1,683
words)**

Hello, I'm Claire Cassel. Thank you for joining us for a week-long
series of podcast about our native pollinators brought to you by the
Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the United States Department of
the Interior.

Today is Tuesday June 24^th^ and Dave Harrelson, a biologist with the
Endangered Species Program shares information about our nation's
endangered butterflies and endangered plants.

# Introduction

If faced with extinction, any species of fish, wildlife, or plant may be
placed under the protection of the Endangered Species Act in one of two
categories, endangered or threatened.

And to clarify those two terms, an "endangered" species is one that is
in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its
range.

And a "threatened" species is one that could become endangered in the
near future.

When describing the reasons why various species of plants and animals
are placed on the endangered and threatened species list we often point
to a loss of habitat.

This is certainly the case for some of the most beautiful endangered
species, the butterflies.

For most of the 24 listed butterflies, the factors leading to their
endangered or threatened status include detrimental land management
practices, excessive or improper use of pesticides and herbicides,
reduction or displacement of native plants that they require at some
stage in their life, and general habitat loss through agricultural,
commercial, and residential development without consideration of these
species' biological needs.

The reason why species get into trouble is expressed in the text of the
Endangered Species Act this way: Congress stated that "various species
of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered
extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered
by adequate concern and conservation."

In 1973, when President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, the
original list of endangered and threatened species contained no insect
pollinators. However, today several species of pollinators, including
butterflies, birds, moths and bats, receive protection under the law.

**Schaus swallowtail**

Listed on April 28^th^, 1976 as threatened, the Schaus swallowtail was
the first butterfly to be protected under the Endangered Species Act, or
ESA as the law is often referred to.

This butterfly was originally described by William Schaus in 1911 from
specimens collected in the south Miami area in 1898. The butterfly was
originally distributed in southern Florida's tropical hardwood hammocks
from south Miami to Lower Matacumbe Key. Hardwood hammocks are a type of
forest that is on ground that is slightly elevated above the surrounding
landscape. These forests are essential for the survival of the butterfly
and its primary food plants, torchwood and wild lime.

Though its range had never been geographically widespread, by the early
1980's the amount of hardwood hammock habitat the butterfly requires had
been significantly reduced. Other threats affecting the species included
widespread aerial application of insecticides for mosquito control,
non-native predatory fire ants, and over-collecting.

The ongoing loss of habitat and food plants was pushing the Schaus
swallowtail even farther toward the brink of extinction. This resulted
in the Fish and Wildlife Service reclassifying the butterfly to the more
imperiled status of endangered in 1984.

Today, the Schaus swallowtail's situation has improved somewhat. This
has largely been due to the acquisition and restoration of hammock
habitat.

However, the status of the Schaus swallowtail has not yet reached that
state on the long road to recovery where it can be reclassified from
endangered to threatened status.

Simply put: It is far easier to preserve a species and its habitat than
it is to restore both back to health once damaged.

# Karner blue

The Karner blue butterfly is classified as endangered. It formerly
occupied a range that extended across 12 states from Minnesota to Maine.
Populations of this butterfly were also known from the province of
Ontario, Canada. Today the Karner blue is restricted to generally
isolated populations in the seven states of Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Indiana, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire, and Ohio.

The Karner blue butterfly is dependent for part of its life cycle on a
plant, wild lupine. How? While adult Karner blues feed on a variety of
plants, wild lupine is the only known food plant for their larvae.
Without wild lupine the cycle of life for this butterfly would be
broken.

Lupines are adapted to particular environmental conditions. The plants
required by the larvae of the Karner blue, are found in savanna,
barrens, and dune habitats which were once quite extensive. However,
like many other places the habitats of the Karner blue have been subject
to extensive development with a resulting decline in the butterfly.

Because the Karner blue larvae have a unique dependence on wild lupine,
Federal recovery plans for the Karner blue need to include protection
and management of wild lupine habitat as well.

John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club expressed nature's intricate
relationships this way: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we
find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

# 

# Fender blue

Another example of those intricate relationships between plants and
pollinators is the Fender's blue butterfly, an endangered species.

The Fender's blue once thrived in the prairies of the Willamette Valley
in Oregon. However, during the past century and a half, almost 99
percent of the butterfly's habitat had been converted to farmland,
residential development, and other uses.

Today, the remaining Fender's blues survive only among the fragmented
remains of the Valley's prairies and the largest population exists on
the Fish and Wildlife Service's [Baskett Slough National Wildlife
Refuge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskett_Slough_National_Wildlife_Refuge).

Now here's the interesting part. Fender\'s blue butterflies are
completely dependent upon the continued existence of a
[threatened](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threatened_species) plant
species, [Kincaid\'s
lupine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupinus_sulphureus).

The butterflies deposit their eggs on the lupine. The eggs hatch, and
the larvae winter in the plant's root system. In spring they emerge to
feed on the plant. Eventually they metamorphose and emerge as adult
butterflies and in the one to two weeks that remain of their lives, the
adults will mate and deposit the eggs of the next generation on
Kincaid's lupine, continuing the life cycle.

These examples help to illustrate the close interdependence between
species and the importance of an integrated or ecosystem approach to
conservation and species recovery.

# Plants

The fact that the Fender's and Karner blue butterflies are tied to
specific plant species by their biology should make us think about our
nation's endangered and threatened plants.

Ask most people to name some endangered animals and they have no problem
identifying several species, but if you ask people to name some
endangered plants. Well... A lot of folks draw a blank.

Most people also don't realize that there are more native plants listed
as endangered or threatened in the United States than there are animals.

Of the plants protected under the Endangered Species Act, most are
flowering species that reproduce by producing seeds. And while many of
these plants are able to self pollinate, the majority require
pollinators to complete their reproductive cycle.

The problem is that for many of these endangered and threatened
flowering plants we do not know who their pollinators are.

In other instances we may know who the pollinators are, but those
species are no longer around, or around in sufficient numbers to do the
job.

Are they extinct? Have they somehow been driven from the places where
the plants still remain?

Often times we really don't know. And this can lead to some really
intensive recovery efforts to prevent extinction for some species of
plants.

## Hawaii

The Mauna Kea silversword and Mauna Loa silversword are two endangered
plant species found only on the island of Hawaii. Both require
pollinators to successfully complete their life cycle.

Both species may live for up to four decades, that's right forty years,
before sending up a single, six-foot tall stalk covered with hundreds of
small flowers.

And this is it. These plants only flower one time. After the seeds
develop to maturity the parent plant dies.

To produce enough seed to create the next generation, the flowers must
receive pollen from another silversword plant.

The problem is that there are so few plants that rarely are two
individuals flowering at the same time. Compound this problem by the
fact that both plants need to be near enough to each other for
pollinators to do the job that nature intended. So what is the strategy
to recover these unique plants?

To make up for low numbers of pollinators, individual plants flowering
at different times, and plants potentially being too far away from each
other for pollination to be effective, biologists become surrogate
pollinators to aid the recovery of these endangered plants.

Each year biologists locate budding silverswords and return when the
plants are in flower to collect their pollen. They then go to other
silverswords as they bloom and gently brush the collected pollen onto
their flowers, this mimics the cross pollination that would naturally
take place.

Returning in late summer, the pollinator/biologists, or in this case
botanists, collect seed for propagation. The young plants raised from
these seeds are eventually transplanted into the silversword's natural
habitat in an ongoing effort to build up the wild population to a
self-sustaining level.

When sufficient numbers of silverswords are established it is hoped that
Hawaii's native silversword pollinators, yellow-faced bees, will more
easily be able to fly from flowering silversword to silversword, and in
so doing help to maintain and recover these unique Hawaiian plants.

In the examples we discussed, both species, animal and plant, need
coordinated recovery efforts. This applies to management decisions,
restoration efforts, and physical protection of their shared habitats.

As American conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold wrote, "To keep
every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent thinking."

For the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this is Dave Harrelson

This podcast is a product of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a
partner with the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the
Pollinator Partnership. Tomorrow we will talk about pollinator
gardening.

To tune in to other National Pollinator Week podcasts, find
pollinator-friendly information and products, visit
[www.pollinator.org](http://www.pollinator.org/)