{"id":2334,"date":"2023-06-05T20:02:15","date_gmt":"2023-06-05T20:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2023-06-08T17:28:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T17:28:53","slug":"after-two-decades-of-searching-a-rare-butterfly-is-discovered-during-the-vermont-butterfly-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/after-two-decades-of-searching-a-rare-butterfly-is-discovered-during-the-vermont-butterfly-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"After Two Decades of Searching a Rare Butterfly is Discovered during the Vermont Butterfly Atlas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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About the size of a penny, a Bog Elfin, its wings folded up over its body, sips nectar among the petals of a rhodora flower. \u00a9 Bryan Pfeiffer | Redistribution or any other use of this image is prohibited without express written permission of the Vermont Center for Ecostudies or the copyright owner.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Nearly every spring for the past 21 years, Bryan Pfeiffer has trekked into some of the most remote bogs across Vermont. Along the way, he donated blood to black flies, sunk into muck, and on occasion wondered whether he\u2019d get out of certain bogs alive.<\/p>\n

Year after year, Pfeiffer never found what he was searching for: Bog Elfin, one of the smallest and most elusive butterflies on the continent, and a rarity nobody had ever seen in Vermont.<\/p>\n

But persistence and experience finally paid off in mid-May when Pfeiffer, alone in northern Vermont, finally caught up with the tiny butterfly \u2014 and lived to tell about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI half figured that I would either find this butterfly or die trying,\u201d said Bryan Pfeiffer, 65, a writer and entomologist who finally located the elfin at a bog in northern Vermont on May 19.<\/p>\n

One of the smallest butterflies on the continent, Bog Elfin is notoriously hard to locate. Not only does it spend most of its life high in black spruce trees, it is on the wing and detectable for only a few weeks from mid-May to early June. Complicating the search are hoards of biting black flies.<\/p>\n

Pfeiffer\u2019s fateful discovery coincides with the launch this spring of the second\u00a0Vermont Butterfly Atlas<\/a>, which enlists experts and novices alike to search the state for butterflies and report what they find. Kent McFarland, who directs the butterfly atlas for the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE), said the elfin\u2019s discovery illustrates how much remains to be known about the state\u2019s biological diversity, particularly its insect life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to discovering biodiversity, many of us think of far-off exotic places,\u201d said McFarland. \u201cBut there\u2019s plenty to find here in our own backyards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repeated every 20 years, the five-year butterfly atlas (2023-2027) is but one project of VCE\u2019s ambitious\u00a0Vermont Atlas of Life<\/a>, an online catalog of the state\u2019s biodiversity. \u201cWe\u2019re still seeking volunteers for the atlas,\u201d McFarland said, \u201cand you don\u2019t need to know much about butterflies to contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pfeiffer\u2019s search for the Bog Elfin began during the previous butterfly atlas in 2002. Imperiled or vulnerable across much of its range, the elfin had been known only from limited parts of the northeastern US and eastern Canada, but not Vermont. Threats include global warming, pesticides and draining or flooding of spruce bogs.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiscovering the Bog Elfin in Vermont is a testament to our ongoing commitment to land conservation and biodiversity,\u201d said Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore. \u201cWhen we protect and restore a diversity of habitats, we ensure a thriving future for Vermont wildlife \u2014 both familiar and elusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore added that the past year has seen multiple species of conservation interest discovered or rediscovered on land conserved and managed by the Agency of Natural Resources, including lands prioritized by the agency\u2019s planning tool\u00a0Vermont Conservation Design<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we protect the most important natural features across our landscape, we\u2019re protecting all the pieces that make an ecosystem whole,\u201d Moore said, \u201cfrom the smallest butterfly to the largest ranging mammals, from common trees to rare plants and everything in between.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although he has pursued and studied wildlife from the tropics to above the Arctic Circle, Pfeiffer has a particular fondness for bogs and their suite of birds, insects and plants, including orchids. And while he recognizes that few people will ever see a bog elfin in the wild, and might even dismiss it as little more than an obscure brown insect, Pfeiffer sees grandeur in the tiny butterfly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us will never see a Polar Bear, but we know that the Arctic is a better place for having them,\u201d he said. \u201cVermont is a better place for having Bog Elfins up there in the spruce where they belong, overseeing orchids and songbirds and blackflies \u2014 or even besotted and aging biologists like me.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rare and elusive butterfly has been discovered for the first time in Vermont, flying this spring at one of the state’s protected natural areas. Bog Elfin, patterned in brown and rust, and no bigger than a penny, had eluded detection in the state until one flew past a Vermont field biologist who had been searching for it for two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2338,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.e-butterfly.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}