Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Thursday 21 November 2019
Butterfly on a bomb range: Endangered Species Act at work

By SETH BORENSTEIN the money expended un-
AP Science Writer der the act, according to
FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) the annual accounting fig-
— In the unlikely setting of ures. About $3 million was
the world's most populated spent to save the St. Francis
military installation, amid Satyr butterfly.
all the regimented chaos, Nick Haddad, a Michigan
you'll find the Endangered State University butterfly
Species Act at work. biologist and St. Francis ex-
There, as a 400-pound ex- pert, regularly visits the artil-
plosive resounds in the dis- lery range.
tance, a tiny St. Francis Sa- He expected a moon-
tyr butterfly flits among the scape, but found beauty.
splotchy leaves, ready to Because no one was ven-
lay as many as 100 eggs. At turing into the woods there,
one point, this brown and no one was dismantling
frankly dull-looking butterfly beaver dams or snuffing
could be found in only one out fires. Aside from muni-
place on Earth: Fort Bragg's tion fragments, the land-
artillery range. scape was much like North
Now, thanks in great mea- Carolina before it was al-
sure to the 46-year-old fed- tered by humans.
eral act, they are found The picky butterfly needs a
in eight more places — touch of chaos in its habi-
though all of them are on tat. It requires water, but
other parts of the Army not a lot. It thrives on fire
base. And if all goes well, to burn away overgrown
biologists will have just A St. Francis' satyr butterfly rests on a leaf in a swamp at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Monday, plants, but not too much.
seeded habitat No. 10. July 29, 2019. It's wing was marked for identification by a biologist studying the rare insect. Now, Haddad and his
One of Earth's rarest but- Associated Press team replicate those con-
terfly species, there are have made it off the en- to protect their habitat. Un- past 15,000 just on military ditions elsewhere on base,
maybe 3,000 St. Francis dangered list because of der the law, it is unlawful to bases. and they watch the butter-
Satyrs. There are never go- recovery, including bald "harass, harm, pursue, hunt, After failed efforts, bi- fly population grow.
ing to be enough of them eagles and American al- shoot, wound, kill, trap, ologists and bureaucrats ___
to get off the endangered ligators. capture or collect" endan- changed their approach. After years of criticisms
list, but they're not about to "Species will remain in the gered animals and plants, Instead of prohibiting work from conservatives that
go extinct either. They are Endangered Species Act and it also forbids the elimi- on land the woodpecker the endangered species
permanent patients of the hospital indefinitely. And I nation of their habitats. needs, Fish and Wildlife program is too cumber-
bureaucratic conservation don't think that's a failure Another species found at Service officials allowed some for industry and land-
hospital ward. of the Endangered Spe- Fort Bragg — the red-cock- landowners to make some owners, President Donald
In some ways, the tiny but- cies Act itself," says Jake Li, aded woodpecker — is a changes as long as they Trump's administration has
terfly is an ideal example director for biodiversity at case of success but at a generally didn't hurt the enacted 33 different re-
of the more than 1,600 U.S. the Environmental Policy cost of $408 million over 19 bird. The Army set fires to forms.
species that have been Innovation Center in Wash- years. regularly burn scrub. Among them: a change
protected by the Endan- ington. The woodpeckers live only The result? When Fort in the rules for species that
gered Species Act. Alive, ___ in longleaf pines, which Bragg Endangered Spe- are "threatened," the clas-
but not exactly doing that The Endangered Species have been disappearing cies Branch Chief Jackie sification just below endan-
well. Act "is the safety net of last across the Southeast for Britcher started, in 1983, gered. Instead of mandat-
To some experts, just hav- resort," says Gary Frazer, as- more than a century, due there were fewer than 300 ing, in most cases, that they
ing these creatures around sistant director of ecologi- to development and sup- woodpecker families on get the same protection as
means the 46-year-old cal services at the U.S. Fish pression of fires. Fort Bragg. Now she counts endangered species, the
law has done its job. More and Wildlife Service, which In the 1980s and 1990s, ef- 453 families. new rules allow for varia-
than 99.2% of the species administers the law. "We list forts to save the wood- "Something is going right," tions.
protected by the act sur- species after all other ve- pecker and their trees set she says. That is better management,
vive, The Associated Press hicles of protection have off a backlash among The Army has better land to says the Fish and Wildlife
has found. Only 11 species failed." landowners who worried maneuver in and the com- Service's Frazer, adding, "It
were declared extinct. The 1973 law, passed unan- about interference on their munity is taking pride in the allows us to regulate really
On the other hand, only 39 imously in the Senate, was private property. Wildlife woodpecker, Lynch says. only those things that are
U.S. species — about 2% designed to prevent spe- officials were even shot at. __ important to conservation."
of the overall number— cies from going extinct and Army officials weren't hap- From 1998 to 2016, the fed- Noah Greenwald, endan-
py either. eral government tallied gered species director of
"We couldn't maneuver. $20.5 billion in spending the Center for Biological
We couldn't shoot because on individual species on Diversity, characterizes the
they were afraid the bird the endangered list. That's regulations as "a disaster."
was going to blink out and based on an annual per- While scientists across the
go into extinction," says for- species spending report globe warn of the coming
mer top Fort Bragg plan- that the Fish and Wildlife extinction of a million spe-
ning official Mike Lynch. Service sends to Congress, cies in the decades ahead,
By the 1980s, the red cock- but that tally is not compre- Nick Haddad is determined
aded woodpecker popu- hensive. that the St. Francis Satyr
lation was below 10,000 na- Seven species, mostly fish, butterfly won't be one of
tionwide. Now, they're well ate up more than half of them.q