Green Hairstreak butterfly habitat restored under S.F. project gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219680|article-gallery-5930877|1 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219752|article-gallery-5930877|2 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219755|article-gallery-5930877|3 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7220152|article-gallery-5930877|4 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7220150|article-gallery-5930877|5 One hundred years ago, a little blue butterfly flew around the dunes of San Francisco with a little green butterfly. And then people came, filling hills and valleys with houses and pushing the blue, gossamer-winged Xerces Blue to extinction — the first butterfly on the planet to die off from human encroachment. The last one was seen in 1940. Since then its friend, the Green Hairstreak butterfly has held on — barely — the numbers dwindling to less than 100 in the city some years back, its habitat of coastal dunes taken over by people or ice plant. But for the last six years, conservationists have put their heads and their hoes together to help restore the Green Hairstreak habitat and create a corridor of butterfly brothels, where the fuzzy creatures can access the right plants to procreate. “I thought we could get boys from this breeding population to meet girls from that breeding population and flood the neighborhood with” native plants, said Liam O’Brien, an actor turned lepidopterist, who came up with the idea in 2007. “I just wanted to try.”S.F. legacy It might be said that it seems like a lot of work to keep a little butterfly in the city — there are thriving populations in Marin, so it’s not endangered. That’s not the point, O’Brien said. “It’s not just the creature disappearing; it’s us seeing the creature,” he said. “The experience of seeing an emerald green butterfly is something all San Franciscans had.” In the years since, the nonprofit Nature in the City has launched the Green Hairstreak Project to create little patches of land near one another that have the two plants the picky butterflies (and the larvae/caterpillars) eat — coastal buckwheat and deerweed. The female Green Hairstreaks are programmed by nature to mate and then fly up to 200 feet from the original habitat to lay eggs and expand the population. But in 2006, they were stuck at Rocky Outcrop Park with nowhere to go. “If they become isolated on these little urban islands, their populations can blank out really easily,” said Amber Hasselbring, executive director of Nature in the City. That had already happened on many of the city’s coastal hillsides. So in 2008 they started planting the deerweed and buckwheat at 14th Avenue and Pacheco Street, a stone’s throw from the original site at Rocky Outcrop Park.‘They will return’ “We had breeding Green Hairstreaks within a year,” O’Brien said. “Just put the environment back, and they will return. I guess that really works.” The project has added a dozen sites north and south of the original hill, and an estimated 500 fuzzy green butterflies now flit about in the spring, during their few months of flying time. But not on Hawk Hill, several blocks south. The population there blanked out, and the neighborhood hasn’t seen a Green Hairstreak in years, Hasselbring said. But at Hoover Middle School, which sits at the base of Hawk Hill, students are getting ready for their return. They’ve been pulling non-native ice plant and acacia and planting plants for the Hairstreak and other native critters like the Pacific Chorus frog. “It’s an ecosystem,” said Jeff Brown, co-director of Kids in Parks, a nonprofit that gets children involved with nature. “We’re trying to improve things for all of the natives up here. They were here first.” Sixth-grader Laurence Bay was among a recent group of students planting seeds, pulling bad plants and sifting the compost pile at the base of Hawk Hill, “so we could attract more butterflies,” Laurence said, even though he couldn’t say what a Green Hairstreak looked like. “I’ve never met one,” the 11-year-old said. He’d like to someday.More work needed It will take a couple of more native-plant stepping stones to get them back to Hawk Hill, the highest dune habitat in North America. “Their habitat is ready,” Hasselbring said. “So that’s all we need to do is make the corridor more complete. “If we can get them to fly back down there, they’ll get to Hoover again.” O’Brien would like to see that happen, not just for the butterfly’s sake, but for everyone’s sake. “It’s stunningly beautiful,” he said. “It’s as good as having a panda walking around the neighborhood.” Jill Tucker is a San Francisco Cronickle staff writer. E-mail: jtucker@sfchronicle Twitter: @jilltucker For more information about the Green Hairstreak Butterfly Project, go to natureinthecity.org. The next planting for the Hairstreak corridor is 10 a.m. to noon, Dec. 20, at the Quintara Steps, at 15th Avenue and Quintara Street.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 02:39:38 +0000
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