Saving a “Neat Little Butterfly” species at the Santa Lucia Conservancy [Ellie Oliver IEP ’21]

Ellie Oliver conducting the banding and release method on a Tri-colored Blackbird.
Ellie Oliver conducting the banding and release method on a Tri-colored Blackbird.

Ellie Oliver conducted research in association with Santa Lucia Conservancy. First, she describes her takeaways from her experience. Then, she provides excerpts from her research report. … Continue reading Saving a “Neat Little Butterfly” species at the Santa Lucia Conservancy [Ellie Oliver IEP ’21]


Personal Experience

Experiential Professional Learning (EPL) funding allowed me to pursue an internship with the Santa Lucia Conservancy, and work on a project to help in the conservation and management of a tiny endemic and endangered butterfly. The project required many hours in computer land, and some tedious data and file management! Fortunately I was able to sort through the data they had and put together updated range maps that will help the Conservancy make land management decisions that might affect the butterfly’s host plant.

My work also helped prepare for creating a habitat suitability model to predict where more colonies of the butterflies might be found. Though my supervisor and I underestimated how much data organizing needed to be done, I am confident that my work was useful and I’m proud of what I accomplished. This was professionally rewarding as I was able to hone my skills with GIS while learning about and contributing to the conservation of a neat little butterfly.

I’m a bird nerd, so the most fun outing was trapping and banding the endangered tri-colored blackbirds!

It was also personally rewarding because I was able to help the Conservancy with several field projects, which meant I got to be out in nature! I participated in pond surveys (up to my chest in pond muck counting tadpoles) and raptor surveys (find and ID as many of the awesome predators as I can!). I’m a bird nerd, so the most fun outing was trapping and banding the endangered tri-colored blackbirds! Overall this experience taught me the importance of patience with technology, a good file management system, and the importance of taking time to be outside in nature.

Research Excerpts

Introduction

The Santa Lucia Preserve is a 20,000 acre conservation community, where the initial sale of high-end real estate paid for the protection and conservation of a pristine section of central California’s unique biome. The Santa Lucia Conservancy is the non-profit land trust created to manage the wildlands and conservation easements within the preserve, and is responsible for management and conservation projects on approximately 18,000 acres. In addition to the human residents, the preserve is home to a myriad of creatures large and small, rare and common. One such animal is easily overlooked, but is especially rare and is the focus of this study: a tiny blue butterfly. 

Smith’s Blue Butterfly Euphilotes enoptes smithi is endemic to the central California coast; its entire known range is about 80 miles of coastline from Monterey Bay to Northern San Luis Obispo County.1 This tiny butterfly, with a wingspan of less than 1 inch, is entirely dependent on two species of buckwheat plants: Coast Buckwheat (Eriogonum latifolium) and seacliff buckwheat (Eriogonum parvifolium). These plants are utilized by the females for oviposition and also provide food for larvae and adults.2 While all Smith’s Blue Butterfly colonies depend on buckwheat, not all buckwheat colonies host the butterfly. Buckwheat conservation is key to protecting the endangered Smith’s Blue, and the buckwheat face threats from coastal development, introduction of invasive plant species, and fire suppression activities.

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Management Recommendations

The map products showing all known or suspected buckwheat stands within the Santa Lucia Preserve should be consulted before any land management decision is made that may impact the plants and their butterfly residents. For example, fire-breaks are often cut via bulldozer in preparation for fire-season or for emergency wildfire management. Quick decisions need to be made about the best locations for these vast disturbances, and the map of known or likely buckwheat locations should be used to plot fire-breaks that result in minimal damage to the plants. Since buckwheat evolved with California’s historic fire regime, fire itself is unlikely to be as damaging (and may even be beneficial) to the plants, while the bulldozer’s impact is greater and more devastating. An accurate map of buckwheat locations could allow for natural studies of post-fire recovery of the buckwheat and butterflies when/if fires do occur on the Preserve. Additionally, prescription burns are likely to be a component of pre-fire season preparation on the Preserve, and careful consideration of buckwheat locations and response to fire should be part of any prescriptive fire burn plan. 

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