Low-key group champions butterfly

Xerces Society aids conservation of invertebrate species

By Steve Law

Pamplin Media Group, Jan 20, 2011

COURTESY OF CAITLIN LABAR

Yamhill County is accused of failing to protect the Fender’s blue butterfly, which manages to survive along some county roadsides.

Audubon Society speaks for the birds.

Defenders of Wildlife protects the wolves.

World Wildlife Fund champions the polar bears.

So who’s left to fight for the butterflies, the bees, and the mussels?

It turns out, it’s a little-known national group headquartered in Portland, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

Operating from an unmarked office building on bustling Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard, the Xerces Society (pronounced Zer-seas) is collaborating on projects in 36 states to protect the “neglected majority” — animals without backbones that constitute more than 95 percent of the world’s critters.

“They’re the basis of every food chain,” says Scott Black, Xerces Society executive director. “Without them, we wouldn’t have most flowering plants.”

Other wildlife conservation groups catch the public eye championing what Black calls “charismatic mega fauna” — species like polar bears, pandas or salmon.

“The closest we get is the Monarch butterfly,” he says.

“We’ve worked on springs where 20 mini-snails may fit on your pinkie finger. Those just aren’t charismatic.”

But the Xerces Society has found a niche working with scientists, farmers, wildlife managers and landowners around the country and overseas. The nonprofit has grown swiftly even through the Great Recession, with 10 full-time staff at its Portland headquarters, plus five more in regional offices in California, Missouri, Minnesota and New Jersey. It has 5,000 dues-paying members.

In November, Xerces made headlines when it filed notice, along with allies, that it intended to sue Yamhill County to protect the endangered Fender’s blue butterfly. The tiny butterfly with a one-inch wingspan survives at only 32 locales in the mid-Willamette Valley, a total habitat of at most 400 acres.

Local roots

The society is named after the Xerces blue butterfly, which graced the San Francisco Bay Area until 1941, when it became the first known U.S. butterfly species to go extinct because of human activity. Robert Pyle, a former Portlander and butterfly guidebook author, came up with the idea in 1971 to form a nonprofit society to protect butterflies.

In the early days, the society was mostly a network of butterfly scientists carrying on correspondence from afar and convening at conferences. The group hired its first staff member in the mid-1980s and opened an office in Portland.

When Black was hired as executive director in 2000, the group had two other part-time staff, plus a quarter-time accountant.

During the years, the group’s research and advocacy work expanded beyond butterflies and moths to encompass bees, beetles, crustaceans, dragonflies, mollusks, flies, freshwater sponges, worms and other species.

Xerces publishes scientific articles, Wings magazine, species identification guides, fact sheets and plant lists. It collaborates with researchers and land managers at the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Those groups are entrusted with assuring biological diversity and protecting at-risk species on their lands. But they often lack in-house expertise in invertebrates, Black says, and turn to Xerces for help doing surveys and evaluating ways to protect the species.

Butterflies remain a priority, but the group also is heavily involved in promoting the revival of native bee species. For many decades, honeybees have come to be the dominant species used to pollinate crops in the U.S. But the recent mysterious decline in honeybee populations, due to what scientists call colony collapse disorder, has caused widespread alarm among farmers and others.

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