[Pollinator] Noted Author Robert Michael Pyle Begins the First Butterfly Big Year

[Scott Black]

Noted Author Robert Michael Pyle Begins the First Butterfly Big Year

On the first day of January 2008, award-winning author and 
lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle began a grand year-long adventure 
to find, experience, and identify as many as possible of the 800 
species of butterflies in the United States and Canada. When Bob's 
journey is complete at the end of 2008, Houghton Mifflin will publish 
his encounters with butterflies, people, and landscapes as a book 
entitled Swallowtail Seasons: The First Butterfly Big Year.

You can support The Xerces Society's butterfly conservation efforts 
by making a pledge to the 2008 Butterfly-A-Thon. Individuals can 
pledge a certain amount for each butterfly species that Bob Pyle 
positively identifies, or may instead choose to pledge or donate a 
fixed amount. All proceeds from the Butterfly-A-Thon will directly 
benefit the Xerces Society's efforts to protect endangered, 
threatened and rare butterflies. To make a pledge, or to track Bob's 
progress and read his stories from the road, please visit the 
Butterfly-A-Thon webpage at 
<http://www.xerces.org/Butterfly_Conservation/butterflyathon.html>www.xerces.org/Butterfly_Conservation/butterflyathon.html. 


Bob Pyle founded The Xerces Society in 1971 and has published fifteen 
books, including such butterfly classics as the Audubon Society Field 
Guide to North American Butterflies, The Handbook for Butterfly 
Watchers, and The Butterflies of Cascadia, as well as award-winning 
literary works such as Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Where Bigfoot 
Walks, Walking the High Ridge, and Sky Time in Gray's River, which 
recently won the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History 
Literature. A lifelong butterflier, Bob envisions this undertaking as 
a chance to aid butterfly conservation while gaining a broad 
perspective on the state of butterfly habitats across the continent 
and their response to climate change.


*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Ecologist/Entomologist
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit organization that 
protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.


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