justnorth posted on January 27, 2008 20:17 :: 946 Views
The amount of land that needs to be managed to protect habitat for the Karner blue butterfly – a species listed as endangered federally, but that has one of its largest concentrations in Wisconsin – could be substantially reduced without harming conservation efforts for the species, according to state and federal officials.
The Karner Blue Butterfly Habitat Conservation Plan, completed in 1999, was a successful, groundbreaking conservation agreement pioneered by the Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and numerous public and private land managers to protect this rare butterfly.
The goal of that plan is to protect the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly while allowing land managers to continue operating in and around important Karner blue butterfly habitat provided they modify their activities to minimize incidental loss of the butterflies, according to David Lentz, who coordinates the conservation plan for Wisconsin.
Although the species is rare nationwide, it is relatively common in central and northwestern Wisconsin, especially where pine barrens, oak savannas, and mowed corridors support wild lupine, the only food of the Karner blue caterpillar.
A key element of the plan was a management strategy that would continue to monitor the butterfly’s population and adjust the original area of protection, if justified.
After eight years of monitoring populations under the plan and following completion of a population study by the University of Wisconsin’s Forestry Landscape Ecology Lab, state and federal officials are proposing to reduce the so-called high potential range (HPR) from the original 9 million acres to 1.9 million acres.
“We now have much better and more complete population information than we did in 1999,” Lentz says. “We recognized that we didn’t have all the information we would have liked when the conservation plan was written but we needed to act in order to head off possibly losing this species forever.”
Lentz said the conservation plan included an adaptive management strategy from the start.
“It was understood all along by all the partners that we would adjust the area covered by the plan if it was justified,” he says. “We’re doing that now with full confidence that this adjustment won’t impact our conservation efforts but will maximize use of our resources.”
The 1999 agreement the area originally protected was drawn broadly in order to be sure all possible areas where the endangered butterfly might exist were included according to forestry officials. Once widely distributed across a number of northeast and Great Lakes states, central Wisconsin in 1999 supported the largest known remaining population of the butterfly and presented the best opportunity for preservation and eventual recovery of the species.
Comments on the High Potential Range can be sent to Dave Lentz, Wisconsin DNR, Division of Forestry, PO Box 7921, Madison WI 53707-7921
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Dave Lentz, HCP Coordinator (608) 261-6451
Article Source:
http://justnorth.com/Articles/tabid/105/articleType/AuthorView/authorID/12/justnorth.aspx