Mission Blue Butterfly Mission
San Francisco is notorious in international lepidopterist circles for its long list of disappearing butterflies.
Scientists are in the midst of a multiyear project to restore the endangered mission blue butterfly to San Francisco’s Twin Peaks. First, volunteers collected seeds of the lupine plant from the San Bruno Mountains, carefully raised the plants, planted them in Twin Peaks and took care of them until they were well-established. With the mission blue’s food source thriving once again, last year the volunteers started relocating the butterflies, placing pregnant females on lupine plants and covering them with nets. On Thursday, a year later, a native mission blue was spotted in the wild, bringing hope that this lengthy project will be a success.