Top Secret Wings: How a Security Clearance Saved Our Backyard Butterfly

by Avinash Prasad

On May 23, 2024, during LA Fleet Week, four hundred seventy nine male and female Palos Verdes Blue butterflies were released into a restored habitat at the Defense Fuel Support Point in San Pedro. The release was the result of a partnership between the Teaching Zoo at Moorpark College, the US Navy, the US Defense Logistics Agency, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Urban Wildlands Group, and the City of Rancho Palos Verdes. The collaboration of these agencies showcase how biodiversity protection is a community-wide effort involving the military, government, educators, and volunteers working together. It was the latest chapter in one of the most unlikely conservation recoveries in American history.

The Palos Verdes Butterfly, known scientifically as Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis, is known as a pollinator found only in the South Bay region of California. In July of 1980, it was listed as endangered and is now found only in the Southern Palos Verdes Peninsula. Its adult lifespan is only five days, while its flight and reproductive season runs from late January to early May, a narrow window that makes every release and every sighting matter. Each butterfly is vital to preserving this species and keeping a healthy ecosystem.

The story of how it nearly disappeared begins with development. The butterfly's historic habitat once covered approximately 5,000 hectares of continuous coastal sage scrub across the southern Peninsula. Commercial development began destroying their native habitat and breeding plants in the 1950s. By 1994, only around 500 hectares of fragmented habitat remained, a loss of ninety percent. In 1987, their biggest threat came in 1987 when the City of Rancho Palos Verdes destroyed the last known PV Blue colony during construction of a baseball field at Hesse Park, becoming the first public agency in American history charged with violating the Federal Endangered Species Act. For the next ten years, the butterfly was presumed extinct.

However, to many's surprise, the species did not go extinct, but rather moved to an area untouched by humans: the US Naval Fuel, Weapons, and Munitions storage annex. There, Dr. Rudi Mattoni found approximately 100-200 healthy PV Blues. Because of the high security clearance at the site, it was largely abandoned and cut off from any huge human interference. The butterfly had survived not because of any conservation effort but because the land it occupied was accidentally protected by military restriction. Mattoni acted immediately, stopping a Navy construction project that was about to place a fuel tank directly over the butterfly's habitat. The rediscovery also gave conservationists legal tools under the Endangered Species Act to challenge a planned development of three golf courses and residential housing on 1,000 acres of nearby land.

The decades that followed allowed for the conservation work needed to preserve these magnificent creatures. With a partnership between the US Navy, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Moorpark College’s Teaching Zoo, and Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy, they formed a conservancy group dedicated to restoring the natural habitat, planting seeds for the milkvetch breeding plant, and building up the size of the remaining populations of butterflies. In 2008 alone, 2,400 butterflies were raised in laboratory conditions at Moorpark College. Recovery efforts operate under a Natural Community Conservation Plan and Habitat Conservation Plan, a legal framework that allows controlled releases while keeping the species protected. In 2020, captive-reared PV Blues were released into their historic breeding grounds for the first time, and two days later, biologists observed breeding behavior and egg laying. The 2024 Fleet Week release of 479 butterflies confirmed the recovery is working, with wild population sightings now confirmed at multiple sites across the Peninsula. The Palos Verdes Blue is not out of danger, but it is here, and after everything it has been through, that is no small thing.

"Sources: Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy (pvplc.org), Palos Verdes Pulse, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Center for Biological Diversity."