Where Are The Butterflies?

One of Southern California's most colorful sights is dying out.

The orange-and-black Quino checkerspot butterflies—so numerous in years past that they splattered windshields near San Diego—have virtually dropped out of sight in the past decade.

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Their playground along the vast stretch from the Santa Monica Mountains south into Baja California and east to the desert has shrunk, and now the future of the Quino is in the hands of two old foes: environmentalists and builders.

The last stronghold of the remaining Quinos—southern San Diego County and southwest Riverside County—are hotbeds of the construction industry.

"I do not believe we're going to save this butterfly," conservation biologist Dennis Murphy said. Already the insect has virtually disappeared from Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The Quino's quickly diminishing habitat worries scientists, who are astonished that the population of such a common butterfly could plummet in so short a time.

The colorful butterfly is embroiled in a new fracas over the federal Endangered Species Act. The U.S. government waited nine years before placing the Quino on the endangered species list last year.

That lag, during a period of increased building, probably doomed the butterfly, Murphy said. But now builders see their own doom, because the new law forbids destroying the butterfly's habitat.

"There's going to be millions of dollars lost as a result of the Quino checkerspot to various landowners," said Brice Kittle, vice president of Van Daele Development Corp., which is building homes in Riverside County and surrounding areas.

Of the 16 butterflies on the federal endangered list, 10 live in California, where homes and freeways have supplanted the unique mixture of plants on which they survive.

Many of the endangered butterflies occupy small, environmentally sensitive areas. The El Segundo blue, for instance, favors the dunes near Los Angeles International Airport.

But there is hope for the reemergence of endangered species. A distant cousin of the El Segundo, the Palos Verdes blue, disappeared from the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the early 1980s, only to restock nearby San Pedro in 1994.

Last fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began issuing guidelines for dealing with the Quino. A map of high and low butterfly concentrations, for use in writing a recovery plan, should be ready by autumn.

Saving the butterfly, federal entomologist Chris Nagano said, "is going to take truly extraordinary measures by everyone."