Reports of the Bay checkerspot's demise were, apparently, exaggerated. For nearly four decades, Stanford scientists led by Professor Paul Ehrlich have studied the threatened butterfly's rise and fall at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. But after years of steady increase, the number of checkerspots suddenly plunged. In 1996, not a single one was found.
Biologists worldwide mourned the famous colony's apparent extinction. Ehrlich and his colleagues at the Center for Conservation Biology began making plans to reintroduce checkerspots to Jasper Ridge from a thriving colony in San Jose.
Not so fast. One morning last spring, butterfly hunter Craig Fee caught and released five male checkerspots at Jasper Ridge. Later that week, hunters found a single female. "The whole brouhaha over their demise was a little premature," says Stuart Weiss, '84, a postdoctoral fellow at the center. So the scientists will continue to watch and wait, but they don't expect the population to rebound. Says Weiss, "Too many things can go wrong with so few butterflies."
