C A R O L Y N E X U M H A D N ’ T T O U C H E D A plant for almost 20 years. It’s hard tosee, much less touch, nature from inside the medium-security correctional
facility at Coffee Creek, where Exum is currently incarcerated. For years, no
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green things grew within
the walls of Coffee Creek,
Oregon’s only women’sprison. But that’s changed,
thanks to a new programthat is teaching Exum andothers how to rearendangered Taylor’scheckerspot butterflies
within the prison itself,giving Exum and others
newfound access to nature.
Exum, who worked in agarden before her
incarceration, almost
forgot how much she loved rooting her fingers in dirt and or feeling the soft
green veins of a leaf. “There’s life in plants,” she says. “We didn’t have a lot ofthat before.”
The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly has stubby, orange-checked wings justlonger than two inches. Thanks to agricultural and urban development, thebutterfly has now lost 99 percent of its former grassland habitat in the PacificNorthwest. Only two known populations of the Taylor’s checkerspot remain inthe wild.
Launched in May 2017, the Coffee Creek butterfly conservation lab is the resultof a partnership between the Oregon Zoo, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service(USFWS), and the Institute for Applied Ecology, a Corvallis-based nonprofit. In
the program’s first year, three incarcerated technicians worked with eggs andlarvae, but no butterflies. This March, the program raised 476 caterpillars thatwere released back into the western plains of Oregon by biologists at theUSFWS.
In recent years, organizations such as the Sustainability in Prisons Project havepushed to bring science and conservation programs into correctional facilities.
The majority of these take place in minimum-security prisons, whereincarcerated people require less-intense security and can be cleared to work offhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/butterfly-conservation-lab-womens-prison

site for landscaping or gardening, according to Chad Naugle, the sustainability
programs manager for the Oregon Department of Corrections. Coffee Creek’s
lab is the first of its kind in a medium-security facility.
People in medium- and maximum-security prisons have far less flexibility.
Adults are not allowed to cross the gate without two security officers, so all
available jobs all take place inside the prison fences—mostly limited to foodproduction, janitorial work, or taking calls for the local Department of Motor
Vehicles, Naugle says, as well as in educational programs. Before theconservation lab, Exum worked as one of Coffee Creek’s GED tutors. SarahMartin, who also now works in the lab, previously worked in the facility’s
computer-aided drafting program. “We wanted a more meaningful job
opportunity for the adults in custody,” Naugle says. “The chance to work with alive animal and get to help out this endangered species becomes restorative
justice and provides self-worth for them.”

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Naugle first came up with the idea in 2016 while assembling the department’s
sustainability program. He knew the Taylor’s checkerspot was in trouble andreached out to the Oregon Zoo to see if Coffee Creek could help. The zoo,
cautious but excited, tasked Coffee Creek with raising and harvesting a batch ofviola plants, the only food source for another endangered butterfly, the Oregon
silverspot. After the successful propagation of around 100 violas, the zoo agreed
to let Naugle open a captive rearing lab—inside the prison. Naugle interviewed
and selected four incarcerated women with a history of good behavior andsufficient time left on their sentences so that they could be involved in theprogram long enough to train others. (Exum and Martin are both currently
serving life sentences at Coffee Creek.)
Naugle converted a spare room—formerly used for yoga and emergency bed
storage—into a makeshift, climate-controlled lab. Coffee Creek installed astainless steel industrial sink, humidifier, split-air AC system, water station, toolcage, shadow board for organizing tools, racks, cages, and grow lights. The lab
connects to the prison’s housing unit, so the technicians have access in an
emergency. Outside, Naugle had a shed built for the checkerspots to use duringhibernation.
The Oregon Zoo has a checkerspot rearing lab of its own, but they’re not quite
the same. Coffee Creek’s must adhere to certain standards. For example, thetechnicians are only allowed to use soft-point scissors, says Ronda Naseth, abutterfly conservationist at the Oregon Zoo who oversees the program at Coffee
Creek. When the lab got a microscope, Naseth had to swap out the traditional
sharp-cornered glass plate for a plastic shield. Anything that could beconsidered a tool by the prison system is locked in a box on the wall.
Butterflies are fragile and not easy to raise, so Naseth worked with thetechnicians for a month before any animals actually arrived. To catch and hold abutterfly without damaging its delicate wings, for example, you must use yournondominant hand and press your pointer and middle fingers together at thebase of the wings, Martin says. It’s hard to master this level of care, so thetechnicians practiced on plastic models from Dollar Tree. To teach thetechnicians how to count and handle the checkerspot’s eggs—which thebutterfly lays in large clusters on the bottoms of leaves—Naseth gave everyone
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a tiny paintbrush and handful of poppyseeds. She also trained the women in data
entry and ran through several scenarios that might happen in the butterfly’s
various life stages, such as a malnourished larva deciding to hibernate forseveral years or a stray egg getting lost in soil.

Even in the larval stage, the butterflies seemed remarkably charismatic. “Theyare very social,” Martin says. “When they’re larvae they cuddle together andnominate a scout and send one [larva] up to check.” In July, the larvae thenenter a state called diapause and remain dormant until mid-February, when they
wake up as ravenous caterpillars. The technicians then feed them leaves
harvested from the plantago plant, a hardy invasive that the caterpillars love.
They grow, molt, grow more, molt again, and then USFWS biologists cart thecritters back into the wild so they can complete their development, first in thehard crescents of chrysalides, and then in their brief and wondrous twilight asbutterflies. That was the entire process the first year. By the next, thetechnicians and lab were ready for live butterflies.

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The Coffee Creek lab received its first shipment of live butterflies in 2018. The
insects had been captured in the wild—carefully—by USFWS biologists. And
they arrived already gravid, meaning that they were carrying clusters of eggs tolay, Naseth says. Armed with good handling practices from the plastic models
and poppy seeds, the technicians waited for the butterflies to lay their signature
pale yellow eggs on the undersides of leaves. If any dropped off, they dipped afine paintbrush in a little water and reattached it. If the butterflies seemed tooverheat in the sun, the technicians sprayed a fine mist on the edge of their net
enclosure. They also fed the butterflies by hand with cotton swabs dipped insugar water. It was exacting, precise, slow work. “I would say our first season
was very nerve-wracking,” Martin says. “We were very careful,” Exum adds.
“You have to go slow, you need to be steady and meticulous. They’re veryfragile animals at all stages.”
Martin swears the three original butterflies all had distinct personalities. “Onenested, one bounced around, and one kept passing out,” she says. So Exum,Martin, and another technician named Mary Arreguin named them. Exum’s wasMamma Mia. Arreguin named hers Novela, after telenovelas. And Martin
named the one who kept fainting Belle. “She was a huge drama queen,” shesays.

“You have to go slow, you needto be steady and meticulous.”
The Taylor’s checkerspot only spends around two weeks of its life as abutterfly, Naseth says, and all that’s left of its life is to mate and die. So themoments the technicians spend with the fluttering creatures are bittersweet. Last
season, the technicians cared for a butterfly that lived an unusually long 15days. “We would just sit there for hours, watching her lay eggs,” Martin says.
“It is always sad to see them go,” Exum adds. In its second year, the program
welcomed 20 butterflies—too many to individually name. But each still has anumber for tracking. “We do a lot of quality control and check to make sure thatno caterpillar is left behind,” Naseth says.

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Once a year, the facility welcomes the children of incarcerated mothers, and thetechnicians get to teach kids about the butterfly’s life cycle, and provide flower
seeds for them to take home. Martin’s 14-year-old daughter dreams of being aveterinarian one day, and was thrilled to learn that her mom was involved in thebutterfly program. “I remember she said, ‘Mom, it’s almost like you’re aveterinarian!’” Martin says.
Martin acknowledges there are challenges to working in such close quarters
with a small team (in a setting they are unable to leave). Some days got very
intense. “Sometimes we’ve had personality conflicts,” she says. “But we’ve
built a wonderful rapport as teammates, and we concentrate on the task at handbecause we have a common goal.” And there was time for fun. “Shallow,” Lady
Gaga’s bellowing hit from the blockbuster A Star Is Born, was a popular radio
singalong. “I believe that country music is what our butterflies thrive on,” Exumsays.
“I disagree,” Martin retorts. “They love the 80s.”
Aside from the butterfly technicians, the lab recruited another team of 10
incarcerated women responsible for planting and tending to the 2,200 plantago
plants that provide
meals for thevoracious
checkerspot larvae.
The team planted
the plantago in theexercise yard, whichmakes the otherwise
bleak place feel a bit
like a garden. This
past year, twoworkers from theplantago crew havebeen cross-training
with the butterfly
technicians to learn
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more about the pollination process and share their separate bodies ofknowledge.
Exum and Martin say they both cared about the environment prior to theirincarceration, but the Coffee Creek program has changed their perspective.
“When I was younger, butterflies were everywhere. But we’ve learned they’re adirect impact of the environment around us,” Martin says. “I have always beenon the side of conservation, but this program really opened my eyes,” Exumsays. “We need to help replenish what we can.”In nature, Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly eggs experience a 50 percent attrition
rate for every life stage, meaning only half of the eggs make it to larvae, andhalf of those make it to diapause, and so on. In the Coffee Creek lab, thetechnicians beat those numbers. They saw an impressive 736 caterpillars maturefrom a batch of around 2,000 eggs laid in June 2018. USFWS biologists
released the animals in two batches this spring in the fields near Corvallis, 70
miles away.

“It feels so good to give a littleback.”
Now considered second-year technicians, Exum and Martin say they feel
confident in their butterfly-rearing prowess, and have added database entry,
digital photography, and microscope handling to their repertoire. They gave aslide presentation to the other incarcerated women at Coffee Creek, which they
say made butterflies a hot topic at the prison. Exum is working on anotherpresentation, this time on what it’s like to release the butterflies. The lab isgrowing fast and looking to add three new technicians, for a total of six, Martinsays.
“I think life in general is about continually learning,” Exum says, “If you’re notlearning, then something’s not right.” Just this week, she learned that a group ofbutterflies is called a kaleidoscope.

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Martin says the lab gives her a sense of peace in a world full of chaos. “It’s sucha rare opportunity to help sustain the life of an endangered species,” she says.
“It feels so good to give a little back.” Exum agrees. When she wakes to head towork at 7 a.m., she likes to tell herself that she’s just off to save the world, one
butterfly at a time.

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