[Pollinator] National Parks article: Hiding in Plain Sight

[Jen Marks]

http://www.npca.org/magazine/2005/summer/rare_endangered.asp

The highly adaptable island marble butterfly, believed extinct for nearly a century, flutters to life at San Juan Island National Historical Park

Hiding in Plain Sight   

By Amy M. Leinbach

Several years ago, after a routine day chasing butterflies in San Juan Island National Historical Park, John Fleckenstein, a zoologist with Washington State's natural heritage program, packed up his gear, stashed away his findings, then waited six months to revisit his specimens. 

   Perhaps it was fate that a laid-back guy like Fleckenstein would rediscover a go-with-the-flow species whose adaptations to an altered northwestern habitat allowed it to survive when scientists had written it off as extinct for nearly 100 years. 

   The story changed dramatically in October 1998 when the colleague who helped catalogue Fleckenstein's findings, Ann Potter of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, presented them at the Northwest Lepidoptera Society's annual meeting. That's when he got the call. 

   "You should see the uproar those specimens caused," Potter told him. Of the butterflies Fleckenstein had collected months before, two were island marbles, a subspecies of Washington's large marble that was last documented in Canada in 1908. Researchers now believe the island marble has always existed on San Juan Island, unnoticed and nearly identical to the much more common cabbage white butterfly. 

   Even though scientists know relatively little about the island marble, they believe the species' ability to adapt is one of the reasons it has survived. Two of its three preferred host larval plants-which provide a place for the eggs to hatch and food for the larvae-are non-native, weedy species from Europe. 

  "The island marble has a strategy, encoded with this idea of kind of going with the flow," says Amy Lambert, a University of Washington graduate student with a keen interest in the rediscovered species. 

   San Juan Island encompasses a diverse range of ecosystems, from semi-arid grasslands to forests dense with Douglas fir, to dry and rocky slopes with stands of Garry oak. Wildflowers decorate grassy knolls and sweeping hillsides, and the beaches offer a mix of sand and gravel and rugged shoreline. Pollinators like the island marble act as the "vital signs" of the park: If they are diverse, healthy, and flourishing, chances are the ecosystems are doing well, too. 

   "Butterflies are an important component of our environment," write Scott Hoffman Black and Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society. "Just as the declines of salmon and spotted owls exemplify harmful effects on rivers and old-growth forest, the loss of butterflies is a reminder that grassland ecosystems-and all of the species that depend on them-are in trouble." 

   Although no one would disagree that the loss of grasslands to development, pesticide use, and other human-caused changes to habitat have had an effect on all kinds of flora and fauna, including butterflies, the rediscovery of the island marble underscored the need for an inventory of species at San Juan Island. To aid with the inventory, the Park Service hired Robert Pyle, a renowned butterfly researcher. Thirty-six species were recorded-a staggering number for the 1,752-acre island. Two of these species were new to San Juan county. 

   "To have rediscovered the island marble and to have done so on Park Service land is really exciting," Lambert says. "Many island residents and the public have come to find San Juan a really special place, because as of now there are no other known populations of this butterfly. We hope that changes, of course-but right now, that's the most exciting part, that it's unique." 

   Although scientists and butterfly lovers celebrate the species' rediscovery, it comes with many questions. Where, besides San Juan Island, does the butterfly exist? How has it survived, and why on San Juan Island? Will the butterfly larvae develop as successfully on a diet of invasive plants? Pyle's inventory is a solid first step in the process of answering these questions, and in making science a bigger priority in the parks than it has been historically. 

   How to sell the discovery to the public also takes thoughtful consideration. Like many rare species, the island marble is vulnerable to poaching, but publicity also helps build community support for a species well suited to ramble outside park boundaries. In 2002, Fleckenstein was leading a group of volunteers in the park when a nearby farm beckoned him with big, open areas that screamed island marble habitat. He approached the farmer in the barn and began his pitch. 

   Fleckenstein told the farmer that invasive field mustard-an agricultural pest-was one of the butterfly's food sources. "He just lit up," says Fleckenstein. "He said, 'If you can find a butterfly that eats field mustard and it's on my land, that's great news-and if you can't find it out there but you find it someplace else, bring some over, will you?'" 

   It is his greatest hope and intention, Fleckenstein says, to do just that. "When I start working with any rare species, my hope is always that I'll find it at a bunch more sites-that maybe we've been looking at the wrong place, or at the wrong times, and there will turn out to be more. Too often we end up with government agencies that are concerned about the species and locals who are concerned about losing their rights. But in this case, we've got some local citizens who are concerned about the butterfly and want to help it survive." 

Amy M. Leinbach is assistant editor for National Parks magazine. 
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