Young people work to preserve native butterfly habitat amid clean energy project at UC Berkeley

In a quiet neighborhood in Oakland, a backyard was abuzz with young people answering an urgent call to action.

"This is essentially triage. We're preserving these plants, which have as you can see. They've essentially been abandoned in bulk at a construction site, "said K.C Wassner.

Rosetta Wang put out the appeal after she visited the UC Berkeley campus late last Friday afternoon. Wang, who is the founder of the Wild Harvest and Restoration Fund, saw a large heap of mature California pipevines, unearthed and drying under the hot sun.

"I was really sad to see all the pipevine unearthed and in a pile," said Wang, a Berkeley alum.

The pile was in a thriving habitat for the California pipevine swallowtail. The butterfly needs the vine to lay its eggs, and for its caterpillars to eat. 

But the university needed to remove some of them so it could proceed with constructing a major new clean energy infrastructure. The existing system burns fossil fuel.

"It's currently nearing the end of its life. It's the single largest source of our campus emissions, and the campus is taking it upon itself to become more sustainable and efficient," said Kyle Gibson, Director of Communications for the campus.

The university has voluntarily come up with a plan to preserve the pipevine and replant it once the construction is finished.

Last Friday, early in the morning, the University told CBS News Bay Area that the landscape crew retrieved some of the uprooted vines to transplant them later at alternate habitats along Strawberry Creek. They plan to restore the existing habitat and perhaps to even expand it and protect it. Some pipevines remain on this site further away from the road and closer to Strawberry Creek.   

Once the call went out, the Pipevine Posse in Oakland took the pile, brought it to a backyard in Oakland, and got to work. They bought soil, compost, planters, and some big bins into which they drilled drainage holes.

Students will submerge the vines in the big bins and planters and keep the soil moist. The team also constructed metal shelves that will hold the big bins under the shade of a tree.

Gowthan Chandrasekaran began coiling vines and putting them at the bottom of some big planters.

"These are like the temporary housing for the pipevines," said the young man.

Mamodou was learning about the California pipevine and the butterfly for the first time.

"I thought planting and saving some plants, and helping out others and hanging out with friends is a fun time, so why not?" Mamodou said, smiling.

Alyssa Pun is a UC Berkeley undergraduate, a member of the campus Botany Club, and very familiar with the habitat. She is a researcher at the Leong Lab, where she studies Conservation & Resource Management.

She hopes that the pipevines will survive until the planting season and says the action of submerging the plants under dirt needs to happen quickly.

"When these plants were found, they were exposed. They were unearthed. They would probably be dead within the next few days," said the student.

Arman Omidavr is a sophomore at Cal who is also majoring in botany and also a member of the Botany Club. He explained how they will put them on a water regime that starts early fall before the first rain begins.

Once the plants sprout new shoots, the team will propagate them.

"From those nodes on the vines where the plant's stem cells are, will emerge completely new shoots and roots, and then we'll be able to cut those out and they'll become their own individual plants," said Omidavr.

While neither the butterfly nor the vine is endangered, the students know that biodiversity, which promotes as many healthy species as possible, is the strongest natural defense against a warming planet.  The more species you have, the more chances some will survive the rising temperatures.

"What we don't realize about biodiversity, or what I feel a lot of people overlook, is that you know once it's gone, it's gone," noted Omidavr.

If they are successful, from these discarded vines, the team will make many new pipevine plants, ready to get planted.

The group will continue to pot and propagate the vines until they are strong enough to give away and replant in the cool dormant season. Some will be given away for free in October.

Wang is now scouting for sites to plant them and is accepting tips for locations on her website.

"Maybe it's a creek, in a park near you, or it could be your backyard," she said.