Watching Washington Butterflies with Bob Pyle: Number Forty Eight

Now we get to the tricky part of this brief history of the women who have played a part in the study and understanding of the butterflies of Washington State. In Part One, I brought us from Lucia Edson and Louisa Pennell all the way up to Sharon Collman and the Vogels-roughly, the Twentieth Century. The small cast of characters could readily be encompassed.

Where we resume, around the Millennium and the Digital Divide in photography, the personnel grow more numerous, and the danger of leaving people out, more acute. My intent is to remember the women who have made unique, consequential, and durable contributions to our knowledge of Washington butterflies. Some of these I will surely leave out, with no such intentions and all apologies. I thank Jonathan P. Pelham, mentor to many of these, for his input and review, but any omissions are mine. Timing is also at my own whim: chronologies intersect and overlap, as time stands still for no woman.

Several women lepidopterists and collectors were active on either side of the year 2000, each contributing much valuable data. Stephanie Shank and Patti Ensor were both based in the little-sampled Columbia Basin. Stephanie produced a number of county records, while Patti worked with others to document the diversity of the Fitzner/Eberhard Arid Lands Ecology Reserve (ALE), on today’s Hanford Reach National Monument. Julie O’Donald has long studied the butterflies of her wildlife garden in Brier. Charlotte Albright collected with Susan Masta, and brought to light her father Joe Albright’s unique find of Reakirt’s Blues near Ellensburg. Other distaff net-wielders were die-hard Scarab Louise Kulzer, Sandy Mayberry, Kathy Burgess, and Maurita Smyth. Meanwhile, Robin Wahl returned Whatcom County sightings, Jay Kelly surveyed the Nisqually NWR, and Kathleen Sayce investigated Oregon Silverspots and others in Pacific County. Next door in Wahkiakum County, botanists Cathy Maxwell, Sally Hughes, and Thea Linnaea Pyle, birder Anne Musche, and master gardener Elaine Myers all helped to build the butterfly picture.

The girls helped too! Also in wildest Wahkiakum, Stephanie and Katrina Ervest marshaled local kids to make 4-H collections, finding the westernmost wood nymphs, among others. Dory Hellyer snagged several county records at Swede Park. Precocious way-pre-teen collector Shaundelle Vail hauled her compliant parents into the Pasayten Wilderness Area, returning with some of the few records of our rarest arctic-alpine species. And how about the Three Vanessids, Jasmine, Rhiannon, and Annabella, daughters of David and Tanya James? Their nimble nets seen bouncing over the vegetation on many field trips surely contributed much to their dad’s scientific findings. It is often the case that extended families butterfly together.

Just in our guru’s case, his career in butterflies has been hugely extended by a passel of female field companions, including Etta Major, Othea Major, Ruth Pelham, Louise R. Lew, and Martha, Cynthia, and Kristi Robinson. Other women colleagues of their lepidopterist men active here have been Kit Stanford, Sigrid Shepard, June Preston, Jo Anne (Pyle) Heron, and Jeannette Barreca. If only we could keep all the young lasses catching butterflies past perilous adolescence! One who did keep on is Moria Robinson, who adeptly studied Silvery Blues on Vashon Island at twelve, styling herself “The Girl Naturalist.” She is now a pro, a postdoctoral scholar in community ecology at Georgia Tech! Stay tuned for a brilliant career.

Female field workers for state and federal agencies and private organizations endeavor to find, monitor, and manage our state’s butterflies. Regina Rochefort, formerly of North Cascades National Park, founded and coordinates the Cascades Butterfly Project (2011) through which volunteers monitor the alpine butterflies of Mount Rainier and North Cascades national parks. As I write, Jenny Shrum and Janet Coles of NPS are surveying Mariposa Coppers in Olympic National Park, which Janis Burger did as well in earlier years. As South Zone Botanist for the Gifford Pinchot National Forest (USFS), Andrea Ruchty Montgomery has been working on projects aimed toward Golden Chinquapin habitat restoration and Golden Hair- streak butterfly conservation for the past decade.

In the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Ann Potter, Mary McCallum, Anita McMillan, and colleagues extensively surveyed West Side grasslands and other scarce habitats, making many finds of note including Taylor’s Checkerspots, Mardon Skippers, and (with John Fleckenstein) the rediscovered Island Marble. Also the agency’s Western Gray Squirrel authority, Mary Linders is the DFW biologist now in charge of the Taylor’s Checkerspot reintroduction. In academia, UW Bothell professor Amy Lambert has spearheaded the research to understand the ecology of the Island Marble, to bolster its numbers, and to manage their habitat. UW Vancouver professor Cheryl Schultz and her cadres of mostly female graduate students have studied every aspect of Oregon’s endangered Fender’s Blue for twenty years, but also Mardon Skippers, Oregon Silverspots, and West Coast Monarchs. And the Xerces Society’s Endangered Species Program Director Sarina Jepsen, with colleagues including Candace Fallon, conducted many productive surveys for the Mardon Skipper and others in the Cascades.

Returning to Ann Potter of WDFW, the former Northern Spotted Owl researcher applied her keen interest in butterflies (which I observed personally in several of my field seminars) to become the chief butterfly officer for the State of Washington. As such she oversaw field research and habitat management, discovered the remarkable Fuca Blue on northern tide- lands, and transferred data from the Hinchliff books to the state data base. She volunteered her own time to receive and process collecting and observation records at the annual Northwest Lepidopterists’ Association gatherings in Corvallis. On her retirement, Ann’s long-time role as state butterfly conservation coordinator has been ably assumed by Pollinator Species Lead Julie Combs, with Data Biologist Sarah Krock.

Five women’s enthusiasm for places and the butterflies they harbor have led to books or published lists. Long-time extension agent, educator, and entomologist Sharon Collman (also mentioned in Part One) wrote The Butterflies of Lowland King County in 1986. Susan Vernon published a definitive list of the butterflies of the San Juan Islands in 2005. In the same year, Kristi Murray Knowles’ charming and very helpful Butterflies of the North Olympic Peninsula came out. 2014 saw Ann Potter’s A Region Specific Guide to Butterflies of the South Puget Sound, Washington (with Rod Gilbert); and Field Guide to Okanogan County Butterflies by Caitlin C. LaBar, a scientist and crack cartographer who trained with Professor Cheryl Schultz.

This would be just the first of an increasingly impressive flight of books by Caitlin, leading up to her phenomenal Butterflies of the Sinlahekin Wildlife Area (2017), National Outdoor Book Award-winning Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest (2017, with R. M. Pyle), and Pocket Guide to the Butterflies of Washington (2022). Recently, with Jon Pelham and Norbert Kondla, she discerned and described the new species Celastrina asheri, Asher’s Azure (my favorite) or Asher’s Blue. Her blog and website (Northwest Butterflies) are both helpful and highly informative. Caitlin exemplifies just the productive blend of scientific collecting and watching/photography that I hoped for when I loosed the latter element upon an unsuspecting but ready public in Watching Washington Butterflies in 1974. Caitlin is our rising star.

Which brings us at last to the Women of WBA. Everyone knows, or should know, that first and foremost among these was the late, great Idie Ulsh. I first met Idie on June 14, 1991, on Whidbey Island, when she took a butterfly field class I taught for North Cascades Institute. I remember her bright-eyed, new-found enthusiasm for butterflies at the time. Already an accomplished bird watcher, she became a “birder gone bad” before my eyes, as she came over to the bright side (as many jaded birders do). Idie took several more of my classes, learning all the while. Eventually (to my great relief) she began offering butterfly classes of her own, taking some of the pressure off. It wasn’t long before Idie had a big following. Noting the growing passion for these wonders on the wing, she came to the conclusion that there should be an organization (other than the Old Boys collectors’ clubs of long standing), especially for the new legions of butterfly watchers and photographers. And in 1999, with several others including Jo Nunnallee, Idie co-founded the Washington Butterfly Association and became its first president. She took many a fine slide herself, and with Dave Nunnallee, coordinated the images for Butterflies of Cascadia (2002), the last pre-digital field guide.

A formidable presence, Idie was also pragmatic. WBA was at first a chapter of no-net NABA. But with essential compromises on that front and others, Idie managed to maintain the support, scientific guidance, and essential participation of the lepidopterists.

Beloved and key to the whole as she was, Idie was far from the only woman important to the success of our group. From Carolyn Heberlein’s brilliant computer and PR oversight, to DNR ecologist Regina Johnson’s long-running and highly competent editorship of G’num, and Paulette Murphy’s professional program direction right through the virtual years, plus busy members such as Cathy Clark, Maureen Traxler, Joyce Bergen, Marty Hanson, East Siders Sue Orlowski, Brenda McCracken, sisters Mary Schu and Lora Langford and Lora’s daughter Isabella, and many others— every woman who has helped keep WBA’s wings flapping deserves recognition here.

I reserve my conclusion for several women of WBA who have gone forth into the field in recent years again and again with their cameras and their increasingly experienced eyes wide open. Jeanne Dammarell, one of our East Side members, has ranged widely beyond Spokane to make stunning photographs of butterflies at poorly sampled potholes, prairies, and pineylands, coming up with some great range extensions and other notable records along the way. Next, I’ll mention experienced butterflier Melanie Weiss. A hard worker both in and out of the field, “Melanie has been the key for getting the data flowing,” according to Jon Pelham, who has mentored her. Melanie has generated scores of noteworthy finds all over the state, spotting something fresh and surprising on every outing. For example, working off the James & Pelham Coronis Fritillary migration paper, she became expert at finding and recording the behavior of Coronis females ovipositing on their desiccated host violets in windswept Kittitas sites earlier left behind by the altitudinal summer emigrants. This is not easy work! You can revisit Melanie’s project in her fine species profile in G’num 22:4, November 2021.

Cheryl Bellin is another wonder. A resident of the Chewuch Valley not far north of Sun Mountain, Cheryl is well situated for exploration, but also prepared to hike far and wide to find the good stuff. She has ranged into little- or unsampled territory with her lenses, uncovering many striking new distributional records-such as the first site for the Lustrous Copper to be found away from Slate Peak in many years. She takes us back to the ‘thirties and before when John Hopfinger and Andy Anderson roamed other wild heights not far away, making major first discoveries-but now documenting them by camera instead of specimen where no net has gone before. Recently, Cheryl solved a riddle that had particularly bugged me: for years, Thea and I and Art Kruckeberg sought the bleeding heart hosts for the Clodius Parnassians we found at Sun Mountain, but none were to be found-even by arch-botanist ARK. Cheryl discovered how to find that hostplant-the inconspicuous Steer’s Head (Dicentra uniflora) -early in the season, before it dries out into invisibility for most of the season (see her beautiful write-up of this experience in G’num 23:1, February 2022). We await the further discoveries and data of Melanie and Cheryl, who between them embody the quality of contribution that butterfliers can make.

Across the state, Tanna Knouse (with her husband and field companion Woody) has also occupied a favored spot for butterfly study. Hoodsport, on the drier West Side of Hood Canal, was a productive butterfly area for early collector Don Frechin and others, and more recently for the young Jon Pelham. But living right there, Tanna is able to look about frequently and in depth, and as such, she and Woody have made many fine “catches” of southeast Olympics species and “Hoodsport Heath” specialties. One of their coups has been a large colony of Mariposa Coppers in a gap in the map for the bridging population between the Cascades and Olympics. Recently, Tanna photographed a truly amazing GREEN Hoary Elfin, likely a one-off aberration.

With that odd image, I will conclude this appreciation of the women who have helped to color in and define the panorama of Washington butterflies. Some might accuse me of cultural or gender appropriation by writing this as a male, and I’ll accept that; but who else was going to do it? The women are too busy enjoying butterflies, and too modest, to write about themselves.

The gender balance in butterfly study has vastly shifted from when I grew up, with the majority of contemporary college field investigators, conservation professionals (as in Xerces), and butterfly hobbyists now female. That is a change long due. Gene Stratton Porter and Maria Sybilla Merian would be thrilled. We are still mostly white, and maybe that will be the next inclusive earthquake. The more of us represented, the more interesting our little butterfly world.

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