Profs and Pints Online presents: “Rescuing Rare Butterflies,” with Nick Haddad, who researches butterflies as a professor of integrative biology at Michigan State University and senior terrestrial ecologist at the W.K. Kellogg Biological Station.

For over two decades, Nick Haddad has sought out and studied the rarest butterflies in the world, most of which can be found in unusual places. As an ecologist and conservation biologist, he also has worked hard to save the insects, in some cases taking the counterintuitive step of altering natural landscapes to create environments where they’ll thrive.

Come join him for a talk that will leave you much more knowledgeable of your garden’s prettiest visitors and challenge many of your assumptions about conservation. He’ll broadly discuss butterflies and their population trends, filling us in on what’s happening with common species such as the Monarch and Cabbage White and rarer butterflies based on twenty years of weekly butterfly surveys in Ohio. But he’ll also immerse us in the field of butterfly conservation and what researchers are learning about how to do it effectively.

We’ll especially get to know the St. Francis' Satyr, a species that helped change how Professor Haddad thinks about butterfly salvation. It numbers just a few thousand—so few that its entire population would weigh just two pounds if you could collect them all in our hands—and it would be extinct if not for its last refuge in artillery ranges on a military base in North Carolina.  You might wonder how the St. Francis Satyr can persist in such a hostile, destructive place, but that’s actually the key to its survival. Paradoxically, artillery creates habitats that are distinctly natural for the butterfly, which lives in the open, grassy wetlands left behind by abandoned beaver dams. As a general rule, the rarest butterflies require natural disturbances caused by fire, flooding, or large animals eating their food plants.

Insights gained from the St. Francis Satyr transformed Professor Haddad’s approach to butterfly conservation.  Unable to enlist and command beavers to assist his conservation efforts, he mobilized other members of his lab to mimic busy beavers in an experimental restoration effort in which they created dams and removed trees. They ended up saving far more butterflies than they would have by taking a hands-off approach.

Hearing him will make you savor even more your time with the our most colorful summertime friends, and perhaps equip you to help promote their survival. ( A recorded version of this talk will remain available online.)

Profs & Pints Online: Rescuing Rare Butterflies