Giving Nature a Helping Hand

The ones released Thursday will get a drink of water, have a little snack and “then start doing mating dances and chasing each other around." That may sound like a quote from a high school chaperone just before prom starts, but it is actually a quote from Nathan's friend Vincent Olivares, who works as a biologist at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. He is discussing butterflies, in particular, Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies. The Daily Herald today had a nice article about the Imperiled Butterfly Conservation and Management Conference being held this week at the museum. It brings together butterfly conservation people from all over the country and ends with a field trip to release the aforementioned Checkerspots which have been grown from eggs at the Museum.     

According to the article,

“This is no-tech,” explains scientist Doug Taron as he shows off his collection of butterfly pupa in chrysalis hanging upside down from scraps of window screen covering an assortment of ordinary, paper Dixie cups. “That's part of the interesting challenge of this work. If we need to do that (secure big money for fancy equipment), butterfly conservation would never get done.”    

This week's Imperiled Butterfly Conservation and Management conference at Chicago's Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, where Taron works alongside fellow biologist Vincent Olivares, attracts three dozen leading butterfly experts from zoos and museums across the nation. They are scheduled to make a pilgrimage Thursday afternoon to the prairie at Fermilab in Batavia to release dozens of adult Baltimore Checkerspot butterflies that were raised from eggs at the nature museum.   

For those of you who are near Chicago this summer, I would encourage you to visit the Nature Museum, which is next door to Lincoln Park Zoo off Fullerton Avenue. The butterfly area is a most amazing exhibit. As you walk into the exhibit area, you are stunned by the sheer number of butterflies flying around you. You have to be very careful where you walk or sit so that you don't injure any butterflies, but you can sit and watch them fly up and land on your sleeve. This is one of my favorite butterflies in the exhibit:

In fact, as you leave, there is a full size mirror so that you can make sure no butterflies are escaping with you. Just remember to wear something cool. It is warm and humid in the butterfly den. There are full color pictures of the butterflies so that the kids can walk around trying to find every different species in the exhibit. Truly worth the trip and we are really excited that Nathan works there and helps school groups to appreciate the outdoors. If you do visit, stop and say Hi to Nate and let him know who you are. The summer is a fairly quiet time for him and I'm sure he would like to meet you.