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Butterflies May Be Free, but Info is Scant

May 06, 2009 - WATERVILLE -- On Saturday at Colby College, about 40 volunteers will listen to a few informational speeches, and will then be armed with nets, specimen envelopes and a handbook.

These "citizen scientists" are pioneers of a sort, as they aim to fill a large gap in the information about butterflies in Maine.

The Maine Butterfly Survey was established by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in 2007. It is a five-year survey in which volunteers collect or take photographs of butterflies, creating a record of which butterflies exist where, and their habitat relationships.

"It gets a whole lot of information in a very short period of time, in a group that we don't have a lot of information on," said Phillip deMaynadier of the department. "With volunteers swinging nets from Fort Kent to Kittery, we'll be able to get a lot of information."

Herb Wilson, a biology professor at Colby College and volunteer coordinator for the survey, said there is no such thing as a typical volunteer.

"They're all over the place," Wilson said. "One of our really active volunteers is 14 or 15. We've got retired people in their 70s. It could be anyone."

According to deMaynadier, about 50 volunteers submitted 1,500 butterfly records over the first two years of the survey. About 1,000 of those were township records – meaning that species of butterfly had not been documented to exist in that town – and three or four were state records, or undocumented species in Maine.

Survey volunteer Jill McElderry-Maxwell searches for butterflies with her 11-year-old son, Fox. She said several species of butterflies inhabit her 23-acre property in Benton. She said she had no idea so many were in her yard until she started the survey.

"There's a little bit of excitement, a little bit of a treasure-hunt flavor to it," she said. "Until you really stop and look, you have no idea how much diversity there is."

McElderry-Maxwell said she'll go out looking for butterflies about once every two weeks to ensure that she'll be able to see species with short life spans. She said she and Fox will catch the smaller species and photograph the larger ones.

"You take a couple hours and you try to catch all the butterflies you can see," McElderry-Maxwell said. "That's easier said than done. A lot of them fly remarkably fast. Until I sprinted after a few, I didn't realize how fast 'fast' was."

According to deMaynadier, about one in five butterfly species in Maine are classified as endangered, of special concern or no longer exist in Maine. Thus, he said, this information could help save butterflies in the future.

"I would say it's a success so far," he said. "I don't easily say that."

If you're looking for butterflies now, McElderry-Maxwell said, the only ones around are mostly the species that spend their winters in Maine, such as Mourning Cloaks and Milbert's Tortoise Shells.

By MATT DiFILIPPO, Waterville Morning Sentinel May 5, 2009


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