Working toward better butterfly habitats at McKee-Besher's park

An interesting email has been floating around on some of the Montgomery County environmental listservs this month. I asked the original author/poster of the message, Dick Smith, if I could put his stuff on my blog.

Those of us working on environmental issues put a lot of effort towards the preservation of trees in this county. What is interesting about Dick's thoughts, below, is that he proposes that we need to also remember to preserve all kinds of habitats, not just forested areas.

Dick has been involved in butterfly study and state and federally contracted surveys and conservation projects for butterflies for the past 30 years. He writes that he is not a professional entomologist, but as an amateur he has gained a lot of field knowledge and experience. He's an officer (Secretary) in the Maryland Entomological Society and takes the lead in their conservation projects.

I can't speak with any authority about his stuff on McKee-Beshers. I've only hiked there a couple of times. But I post it here because I think this is an important discussion to be having right now as environmentalists in a county blessed with green space and cursed by rapid growth.

In his email, Dick wrote:

"Thanks for cueing me in on the McKee-Beshers WMA discussion. This was a former hotspot for butterflies not far from DC and just north of the Potomac Riv. in southwestern Montgomery Co., MD. Phil Kean (MD Ent. Soc. VP) and I composed a list of butterflies from this area from our own and other local lepidopterists' records for the period from the early 1970's through the 1980's. The list appears on pp. 118-119 in Jeff Glassbergs's original 1993 book, "Butterflies Through Binoculars, A Field Guide to Butterflies in the Boston-New York-Washington Region." We listed 81 known species (make that 84 now because we didn't know then about Harry Pavulaan's Hickory Hairstreak, Baltimore Checkerspot, and Summer Azure
record there).

Today unfortunately, many of the less common species no longer occur there. As far as I know, the missing species include:

1. Giant Swallowtail

2. Palamedes Swallowtail (most likely a stray)

3. Checkered White

4. Little Yellow

5. American Copper

6. Bronze Copper

7. Coral Hairstreak

8. Banded Hairstreak

9. Hickory Hairstreak

10. Eastern Pine Elfin

11. Henry's Elfin

12. White M Hairstreak
13. Spring Azure
14. Regal Fritillary (gone from most of East Coast too)15. Meadow Fritillary16. Silver-bordered Fritillary
17. Silvery Checkerspot
18. Baltimore Checkerspot
19. Long-tailed Skipper (as immigrant)
20. Hoary Edge
21. Southern Cloudywing
22. Northern Cloudywing
23. Sleepy Duskywing
24. Swarthy Skipper
25. European Skipper
26. Two-spotted Skipper

Clearly, this represents a loss of approximately 30% of the butterfly fauna from this area within the past 20 years. (Please drop me an e-mail if anyone has seen any of these species at McKee-Beshers in the last 10 years, and I will gladly drop them from the "missing" species list.) The loss is not an exception either. Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Westchester, NY, also written up in Glassberg's book (pp. 105-106), has suffered an almost similar fate (see Rick Cech's NY Times article, "Fluttering into Oblivion").

Why has this happened at McKee-Beshers? It has certainly not been anyone's intention, but my own observations lay the blame to management decisions and practices in the past 20 years that have been perhaps favorable to game species, hunting, and local farmers but detrimental to butterflies.

I see two primary factors:

1.) Ditching and draining of many open seep areas and wet meadowlands and replacement with dry-field croplands, apparently rented to local farmers. This is particularly obvious in several areas south of Hunting Quarter Road. Also, ditching, draining, and frequent vegetative clearances of large acreages of former wet meadowlands for hunting dog training areas. These are evident south of Hughes Hollow and also west of Sycamore Landing Road. Dogbane, milkweed species, Joe Pye, NY Ironweed, wild sunflower, and Mints were abundant and thrived in these areas before the conversions.

2.) Allowing all remaining formerly wet meadowlands to succeed to dense woodland.Restoring such areas for a wider range of wildlife, including butterflies, is however occurring in several areas along the East Coast. The Albany Pine Bush has been managed for Karner Blues for almost 20 years now.

A restoration project is underway in the Concord, NH area - see http://www.nwf.org/endangered/pdfs/KarnerBlueButterfly.pdf .

Ward Pound Ridge itself is undergoing restoration -see http://www.stewardshipbestpractices.org/files/toolkit.pdf

Restoration of butterfly habitat is among the primary restoration goals at the Buckshutem WMA in Cumberland Co., New Jersey - see

http://www.state.%20nj.us/dep/%20fgw/buckart.%20htm

We butterfly advocates in the DC area obviously need to get on the bandwagon. I am not aware of any remnant open wet meadowlands left at McKee-Beshers anymore. If anyone finds any, they need to be conserved and managed with butterflies in mind this time. If none exist, we obviously need to have some trees cleared out and let some open meadow wetlands develop over time in some of the existing wetland treed areas. Abundant plantings of native butterfly larval host and adult nectar plants would then also surely help.

Dick Smith

Conservation Projects Manager, Maryland Entomological Society."

(Special thanks to Patricia Durkin for letting me use the awesome pic of the Baltimore Checkerspot butterfly.)