SAVING THE MIAMI BLUE BUTTERFLY

After Hurricane Andrew ripped through southern Florida in 1992, the already-scarce Miami blue butterfly almost went extinct — no one recorded a single sighting for years. Finally, in 1999, a cheer went up among butterfly enthusiasts when a photographer discovered 35 specimens in Bahia Honda State Park, which now houses the only wild population of Miami blues. Despite captive-breeding and reintroduction efforts, this sun-loving coastal butterfly is one of the rarest insect species in North America.

The Miami blue experienced its first major setbacks n the 1980s, when coastal development exploded and Florida’s war on mosquitoes dispersed toxic chemicals throughout the butterfly’s range. Owing to the efforts of the North American Butterfly Association, the species was declared endangered in the state of Florida in 2003. But though Miami blue habitat has been decimated and the reintroduction of captive-bred butterflies hasn’t been successful, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service still won’t list the species under the federal Endangered Species Act.

In reluctant acknowledgement of the Miami blue’s severe population decline and increasing harm from known threats, the Service proposed emergency listing several times between 2000 and 2004. In 2001, the Service came to an agreement with the Center and other groups to expedite protection of 29 species, including the Miami blue, under the Act. But instead of granting the butterfly its rightful endangered status, the agancy declared in 2005 that while the butterfly did merit protection, lack of funding prevented measures from being taken — and the species has been condemned to the “warranted but precluded” list ever since. The Center has challenged this determination with a notice of intent to sue, and we’ll continue our efforts to get the Miami blue and hundreds of other imperiled species out of the “candidate species” category and onto the endangered species list where they belong.