Butterflies or Four-wheelers?

Many times in life we have to make choices. Parents tell their kids they can have an ice cream cone or a chocolate chip cookie, both not both. Students find two colleges they like, but ultimately they have to narrow the choice to one (at least one at a time).

Our society has another choice. Is there room for nature? Will we make a choice, to value it?

The butterfly above is a Sand Mountain Blue. Its only known location is the Sand Mountain Recreation Area in western Nevada. Like many butterfly species, it has evolved from its relatives by specializing on the plant its larva use for food. In this case, the Sand Mountain Blue depends exclusively on Kearney Buckwheat for it’s survival. Its a sad looking plant that only grows on the dunes that people like to ride their off road vehicles on.

So the question is what will we choose? Conservationists have been forced to sue the Bureau of Land Management who has not responded to their requests for listing the species as endangered.

In searching around the net, I found some more information about the situation at Sand Mountains. The Xerces Society, which exists to promote conservation of butterflies, put out a press release discussing the butterfly and efforts to save. (It’s halfway down on the page.) I’ll quote the part about the Sand Mountain Blue:

The Xerces Society, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a listing petition on Friday, April 23, 2004, to protect the Sand Mountain blue butterfly (Euphilotes pallescens arenamontana). The petition calls on the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to list the butterfly as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act.

The Sand Mountain blue depends entirely on approximately one thousand acres of Kearney buckwheat shrub habitat at Sand Mountain in the Great Basin east of Fallon, Nevada. This area is intensively impacted by off-road vehicles (ORVs), which can kill these butterflies and their host plant (the buckwheat).

Sand Mountain Recreation Area (SMRA) consists of 4,795 acres of BLM public land that is open to unrestricted off-road vehicle use.During the last decade (1993 to 2003), the BLM reported a 25 percent increase in visitor use at the recreation area. ORV use is still going up.Much of the Kearney buckwheat habitat that once thrived adjacent to the dunes has been destroyed in the past five years by ORV users, who now ride not only through the dunes but also over the shrubs themselves.

Last spring, BLM biologists recommended closing the best remaining habitat at Sand Mountain to vehicles in order to protect the butterfly, the buckwheat, and several other rare endemic species.But BLM managers decided to adopt a voluntary system only.

After nearly four months of monitoring, the BLM has concluded that these voluntary measures are not working.Educational efforts and increased signage are routinely ignored as off-roaders leave the routes, often running over posted signs and using the Kearny buckwheat as ORV jumps.

The existing measures are undoubtedly ineffective. Unless more successful measures are put in place, the Sand Mountain blue butterfly’s habitat will be completely destroyed.

“It is unfortunate that the BLM and ORV riders are unwilling to protect the last one thousand acres of habitat for the Sand Mountain blue,” said Scott Hoffman Black, Executive Director of the Xerces Society, “We now have no choice but to take this to the next level and protect this butterfly and its habitat through the Endangered Species Act.”

The Sand Mountain blue is an endemic species, living only in this one place. Without immediate protection from ORVs, this butterfly could go extinct.

So interestingly, riders could have simply respected the establish signs and probably not impacted the butterfly’s habitat. Am I being too cynical in not being surprised that off road riders have a difficult time reading? I’ve never seen eye to eye with people that enjoy riding off road vehicles. I see it impossible to justify their impact on the natural environments in which they’re ridden, all in the name of a little fun.