What You Can do to Save The Mission Blue Butterfly!
Taking Action in The Bay Area!
Taking Action World Wide
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You can encourage you friends and families to visit less to places that have Mission Blue butterflies, and if they do visit those places you can educate them about being more careful
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Volunteer to go help pull invasive plants in its habitat
You can volunteer at already existing organizations such as the Mission Blue Butterfly Project and or create your own.
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You can drive less, and carpool more or take public transportation to limit the amount of fossil fuels going into the soil in places like, Twin Peaks, to reduce the amount of non-native plants growing
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Spread awareness of the endangered Mission Blue butterfly
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You can make a brochure, presentation and or a mini musume in which can be shown to your local community about the Mission Blue Butterflies and why they are important and going extinct. You can also just simply tell a friend about the Mission Blue Butterfly and the importance of it.
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Start a petition to protect its habitat and to stop further development
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Start by setting a number goal of signatures and share the petition with friends and community these will also help spread awareness of the Mission Blue Butterfly. A petition will make noise and draw attention about the surrounding issue to show developers that this is not what the people want.
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Fundraise so that they stay protected for future generations
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Can fundraise by making funding pages, through bake sales and or setting up community events and then sending the money that is made to existing organizations that are already making it their mission to save the Mission Blue Butterflies.
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Start a hashtag #SaveMissionBlueButterfly or simply just post a picture of the Mission Blue Butterfly and talk about why it’s going extinct you’ll be surprised to find out how many people did not know this beautiful insect existed
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Sign a petition
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Go out and find petitions that are already existing and read what will be done by you signing that petition and share with friends and family. It may only seem like one signature but if one signature turns into hundreds it will make a bigger impact than no signatures.
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The Mission Blue butterfly larvae (image from Kobern, 2016)
Mission Blue butterflies unique egg (image from Kobern, 2016)
The Mission Blue Butterfly plays a lot of key important roles in our ecosystem and though it might seem like a small butterfly that is no larger than the size of your pinky. The loss of this beautiful species will cause the loss of a small part of our ecosystem. The extinction of the Mission Blue Butterfly will not only affect the animals and or insects that prey on this species as well putting them at risk for extinction. This is the case with many insect and or small animals if we keep ignoring it and telling ourselves that it's just a small insect we’ll save the next one it will eventually cause the food web to collapse. The Mission Blue needs to be saved now before it's too late to go back.
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More needs to be done!
A Larger budget for helping the mission blue
The creation of a larger budget will allow more lupines to be planted and monitored for the preservation of the Mission Blues for generations to come. This will also open up the possibility of more analysis and studies on the Mission Blue butterflies to help population rate increase. It will also help create and set off restricted land in which the Mission Blue Butterflies might be using as their nesting site. This will help stop further development and or stop people from entering and stepping on their habitat.
Making more laws to protect it!
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Such as to prevent any possibility of development on habitat. Most of the Mission Blue butterflies habitats are on private land for that reason these landowners must be educated about the endangered Mission Blue Butterfly that is living on their land as well as a safe harbor agreement. (The Xerces Society)These will allow the public to focus more on the conservation of bring back the Mission Blue butterflies. Rather than focusing one who will get to develop there. laws to close off any breeding areas and were colonies are. The colonies of the Mission Blue Butterfly are located at sites ranging from 210 to 360 m (about 690 to 1,180-foot) elevation (The City of Portland, Oregon, 2016). There also needs to be stricter laws to prevent pesticide use if a mission blue butterfly is breeding in the area. There also needs to be more control of non native and invasive plants that are taking over the Mission Blue Butterflies nesting area.
Continue to conserve and preserve!
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A continuations of monitoring the Mission Blue Butterflies should continue such as data and observations of population size patterns over the years as well looking at the nesting sites that theses Mission Blue Butterflies used to have and looking at the main reason that these nesting sites have disappeared and then focusing on that(The Xerces Society). Instead of the broader issues.
There is Not Enough Education!
National Parks such as Golden Gate National Park are not doing a well enough job at spreading awareness about the Mission Blue butterfly. There needs to be more awareness about this endangered insect. If these parks and rangers were to educate the public about these wonderful bright blue insects more people will want to help and volunteer to stop the extinction of the Mission Blue Butterflies that call the San Francisco Bay Area their home.