April 10, 2019
Page 9
Mississippi
Alberta
North Portland
Vancouver
East County
Beaverton
photo by
M iChael d urhaM /o regon z oo .
Oregon Zoo keeper Julia Low (foreground) shows a jar of tiny butterfly larvae to Coffee Creek inmates and correction officials during a tour of
the zoo’s butterfly lab last year.
Inmates Help Endangered Butterfly
Innovative program
works with Oregon Zoo
Bringing butterfly conservation work into a
medium-security prison is a rewarding process
for the women inmates at the Coffee Creek Cor-
rectional Facility in Wilsonville.
For much of the past year, the women in cus-
tody raised and cared for Taylor’s checkerspot
butterfly larvae as part of a collaboration with
the Oregon Zoo, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
and the Institute for Applied Ecology.
They recently transferred 476 of the growing
caterpillars back to conservation biologists for
release on western Oregon prairies near Cor-
vallis, and another 246 were scheduled for re-
lease this month. It is the second-ever release
of Taylor’s checkerspots in Oregon — the first
being last year’s inaugural release of 562 Cof-
fee-Creek-reared caterpillars — where only two
known populations of this rare Northwest but-
terfly remain.
Coffee Creek’s butterfly conservation lab
launched in May 2017, with funding from the
federal fish and wildlife agency and the help of an
Oregon Zoo Foundation grant. Zoo staff taught
inmates how to care for butterfly eggs and raise
larvae, supporting their efforts along the way. In
2018, inmates also learned how to care for the
adult female butterflies that lay the thousands of
eggs needed for the program’s success.
In addition to the inmates that rear the Tay-
lor’s checkerspots, another team of inmates is
dedicated to the care and harvest of the 2,200
plantago plants that feed the larvae.
Though once abundant across the inland
prairies of the Pacific Northwest, the Taylor’s
checkerspot has now lost 99 percent of its grass-
land habitat to successional plant growth, agri-
culture and urban development. And while the
butterflies themselves are small, the restoration
of their high-quality native prairie habitat also
benefits a multitude of other species associated
with this ecosystem.