Rearing endangered butterflies in prison: Incarcerated women as collaborating conservation partners

Background/Question/Methods

The Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) is a partnership between The Evergreen State College (TESC) and the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC). It engages incarcerated men and women in conservation projects, including the rearing of state-endangered Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies (Euphydryas editha taylori). A purpose-built facility was constructed at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCW), where inmates are the active project participants. They are involved in every aspect of the work, from rearing and breeding on site, to translocation into the field and attending regional species working group meetings with custody staff supervision. They are also participating in relevant new research.

Specifically, inmates are examining oviposition preference of E. e. taylori between two known and two suspected larval host plants, including state-endangered golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta). Although C. levisecta has the potential to be an effective host plant, restoration ecologists do not use it in restoration plantings because it is congeneric with one of the known hosts, and hybridization might occur. If our study documents that E. e. taylori oviposits on C. levisecta, the restoration seed mix could be altered and recovery efforts for both species could be joined.

Results/Conclusions

One common shortfall of other efforts to rear butterflies in captivity has been an inability to produce individuals as large as those found in the wild. However, preliminary results at MCCCW show larger and longer- lived specimens than those reared in the SPP lab at TESC. In fact, inmates consistently kept alive training surrogate Vanessa cardui (which normally has an adult life span of less than two weeks in captivity) for over two months.

The oviposition work shows a ranking order of preference between the four test plants, and specifically indicates where C. levisecta falls on this spectrum. The results of this work have implications for regional conservation management practices.

Project partners include the SPP, TESC, DOC, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Defense, the University of Washington, the Center for Natural Lands Management, and the Oregon Zoo. This unique collaboration benefits all partners by providing green job training for inmates, reducing the environmental costs of prison, furthering restoration efforts on the part of state and non-governmental agencies and providing conservation scientists and students with novel research projects and outlets for environmental education. Hopefully in the future it can serve as a model for other restoration ecology efforts.