Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly - Meet The Endangered
Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis)
The Palos Verdes Blue is one of the world’s rarest butterflies. It also happens to be one of the most enchanting - resembling an astral starfield of onyx cast into a heaven of baby blue. A subspecies of the much more widespread Silvery Blue, it has only ever existed on the Palos Verdes Peninsula - a wealthy enclave south of Los Angeles with a unique maritime microclimate.
In 1982, the last of the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly’s remaining habitat was bulldozed by the city of Ranchos Palos Verdes to make a baseball field. It wasn’t seen again for a decade when it was discovered on land belonging to a nearby military fuel depot, whose restrictive zoning had accidentally saved a patch of habitat from development.
The butterfly is very vulnerable as it occupies a small ecological niche, relying entirely on just two species of plants for its survival. Conservationists have a captive population in reserve, and reintroductions are regularly made.
NatureServe: Critically Imperiled (T1)
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