Recent widening of the highway south of Cloudcroft may have effected some the plants the butterfly feeds on. Had the butterfly been listed the widening project could have been stopped. The Village of Cloudcroft is trying to acquire land from the Forest Service. By listing the butterfly, this land acquisition can be stopped. They have been collected near Cloudcroft for the last hundred years.
Recent studies show that the range of the butterfly is actually much larger than thought.
So obviously the butterfly population is healthy, if not expanding, and is surely not endangered. Getting them listed as endangered would draw attention to them and may actually encourage some collectors to go after them. As mentioned before, single species management is usually bad for the rest of the ecosystem, so unnecessary listing of this butterfly needs to be avoided. From the above examples you can see why I fear being confused with the extremists, when I am really a concerned environmentalist. Years ago I canceled my membership in the Sierra Club when I realize how extreme their environmental views were becoming.