Abstract
Many of the well-known and intuitive practices from conservation of large mammals do not apply to butterflies. The different body size, lifespan, reproductive potential, and habitat associations of butterflies produce a different series of guidelines for conservation that may conflict with commonly held attitudes and approaches from conservation of larger species. Using a series of case studies from the federally listed butterflies in California, we present a series of lessons for butterfly conservation that emphasizes the different approaches that butterfly conservation requires. These include: that habitats found surrounded by cities are important; that connectivity between habitats may not require a corridor or can be provided by human intervention; that disturbance, including removal of native plants, may be essential to maintain butterfly food plants; that a remote risk of incidental take of early stages of butterflies is often worth taking in the interest of habitat management; that current distributions of taxa may not be their best habitat historically; and that microclimatic and microtopographic variation is important at scales humans rarely consider.
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Acknowledgements
Our research on Palos Verdes Blue at Defense Fuel Support Point, San Pedro was funded by the Defense Logistics Agency on behalf of the Defense Fuels Region—West. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA) Habitat Restoration Program funded our research on Lange’s Metalmark. We thank C. Nagano, A. Owen, and C. Rich for constructive comments on drafts of this chapter.
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Longcore, T., Osborne, K.H. (2015). Butterflies Are Not Grizzly Bears: Lepidoptera Conservation in Practice. In: Daniels, J. (eds) Butterfly Conservation in North America. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9852-5_9
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