Big plans for a little butterfly

[Staff]

Big plans for a little butterfly
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
Posted: 07/06/2009 06:08:45 AM PDT
Updated: 07/06/2009 08:59:27 AM PDT

Big plans for a little butterfly - San Jose Mercury News
excerpts from above:

A team of researchers is proposing reintroducing a vanished butterfly to the hills above Stanford University, a biological experiment with both promise and peril.

If the experiment succeeds, it would return Bay checkerspot butterflies to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and offer important lessons to the fledgling science of species reintroduction, which aims to save thousands of plants and animals from extinction. However, if the experiment fails, some precious insects — sacrificed from the last surviving population — will have gone to waste.

"Reintroduction is a dice game," said Carol Boggs, a Stanford biologist who would direct the experiment. "What we'd like to understand is how to load the dice in our favor. " And this is the perfect place to try it."