Inmates raise delicate butterflies

BELFAIR — A small cadre of inmates at Mission Creek Corrections Center are raising a delicate species of butterfly that has implications for the nation’s defense.

JOSH FARLEY; Kitsap Sun

Published: 10/09/11 12:05 am

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BELFAIR — A small cadre of inmates at Mission Creek Corrections Center are raising a delicate species of butterfly that has implications for the nation’s defense.

A new greenhouse at the prison off Sandhill Road was built to replenish the endangered Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, whose continued demise could cause interruptions to an artillery range at Joint Base Lewis McChord.

That’s because the butterfly, already listed as endangered in Washington, could make the federal endangered species list – and one of its last remaining habitats is on a 7,000-acre base range and artillery impact area.

Should the butterfly be placed on the federal endangered species list, the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife could direct the use of the butterflies’ remaining habitat to ensure their survival, said Jim Lynch, a biologist at the base.

If the inmates are successful, however, butterflies raised in Belfair will be moved to South Sound prairies, boosting their dwindling population.

The checkerspot butterfly, once plentiful on prairies and grasslands from lower British Columbia to central Oregon, has been reduced to about four isolated areas in Washington and Oregon because of habitat loss. More than 1,000 of the butterflies currently inhabit the artillery impact area, making it one of the last – and the largest – populations, Lynch said.

The butterflies flourished on the base land, where fires from the exercises burned and created open prairie habitat, Lynch said. But state fish and wildlife officials and conservation groups are hoping to introduce the species – cultivated by the Belfair prison program – to new prairies in the South Sound.

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