Conservation of Fender s Blue Butterfly through Land Management Methods Used in the Upland Prairies of the Willamette Valley

Photo by Donovan Kim

Current Fender s Blue Work

There is currently no recovery plan submitted for Fender s Blue Butterfly (Schultz 2003) Research has taken place in resource restoration Research has taken place in dispersal behavior ESA requirements have only recently begun to be fulfilled using Population Viability Analysis (PVA)

Resource Restoration

Three experimental methods were used in two sites to test resource restoration:

Tilling

Removes existing vegetation and allows newly planted species to establish Lay a sheet of clear plastic over freshly tilled soil, reduces competition from weeds Restores historically nutrient poor soil conditions, reduces soil nitrogen

Solarization

Reverse Fertilization

Fig. 1. Experimental design. Dark shaded boxes are high forb : low grass plantings and light shaded boxes are low forb : high grass plantings. Each plot is randomly divided into a weeded half and a non-weeded half. Dotted lines indicate areas within which weeds were clipped to assess weed biomass in 1996. Note, solarization treatments are larger than other treatments because Wilson, Ingersoll & Wilson (1994) found effective solarization requires a 2-3 m buffer from the edge of the plastic. (Schultz 2001)

Dispersal Behavior

Less than 0.5% of prairie habitat remains in patches (Schultz 2005; Wilson 1997) Flight paths were followed by dropping a flag every 20 seconds and the following behaviors were recorded:

Fly, perch, bask, nectar, oviposit, and chase

Habitat bias was recorded on an individual and population level

Dispersal Distance From Kincaid s Lupine Habitat

(Schultz 1998)

Population Viability Analysis

Three regions studied: Northern, Central, and Southern Two survey methods were used to estimate butterfly population size: markrecapture-release, and walking transect method This study does make four assumptions

Management Methods

Resource restoration research suggests that solarization is the best method to provide minimum nectar levels (Severns 2003) Dispersal behavior suggests that stepping-stone patches of lupine will move Fender s Blue Butterfly between populations at a rate 8 times faster than a corridor of habitat (Jensen 1998) PVA produced numbers for the a 95% probability of survival over the next 100 yearsMy Thoughts Collaboration of methods is needed to sustain

What should be done?

With these three experiments a recovery plan can be devised for Fender s Blue Butterfly Resource management can be chosen based on dispersal behavior, patch size, distance between patches, and whether or not three sites can fulfill the PVA analysis

Works Cited

Jensen, M.N. 1998. Butterfly May Use Flowery Stepping Stone. Science News 153: 262. Schultz, Cheryl B. 1998. Dispersal Behavior and Its Implications for Reserve Design in a Rare Oregon Butterfly. Conservation Biology 12: 284-292. Schultz, Cheryl B. 2001. Restoring Resources for an Endangered Butterfly. Journal of Applied Ecology 38: 1007-1019. Schultz, Cherly b., Elizabeth E. Crone. 2005. Patch Size and Connectivity Thresholds for Butterfly Habitat Restoration. Conservation Biology 19: 887-896. Schultz, Cheryl B., Paul C. Hammond. 2003. Using Population Viability Analysis to Develp Recovery Criteria for Endangered Insects: Case Study of the Fender s Blue Butterfly. Conservation Biology 17: 1372-1385. Severns, Paul M. 2003. Propagation of a Long-Lived and Threatened Prairie Plant, Lupinus sulphureus ssp. Kincaidii. Restoration Ecology 11: 334-342. Wilson, Mark V. 1996. A Survey of the Native Upland Prairies of the Willamette Valley. Bureau of Land Management Eugene District. Wilson, Mark V., Paul C. Hammond, Cheryl B. Schultz. 1997. The Interdependence of Native Plants and Fender s Blue Butterfly. Oregon State University. 25 Apr 2007 <http:// oregonstate.edu/~wilsomar/PDF/WHS_NPSO_97.pdf>. Wilson, Mark V., Cheryl A. Ingersoll, Mark G. Wilson. 1995. Pest Plant and Seed Band Reduction. Report to the US Army Corps of Engineers and Fishman Environmental Services. Corvallis, Or.