Hank Tomlinson was a Washington lepidopterist back in the 1970s. He collected butterflies far and wide in Washington and throughout the west. I believe he lived in the Liberty-Wenatchee area since many of his specimens come from that area. As many of our pioneering lepidopterists did, he assembled a collection of butterflies but instead of pinning them he used Riker mounts, where specimens are mounted on cotton wool (aka cotton batting in the US; the stuff that cotton balls are made of) in a flat, framed display case. This makes the display much sturdier and less fragile than cases of pinned specimen

As Lady Luck would have it, I was contacted late last year by Adriane Grimaldi, Director of Education at Butterfly Wonderland in Scottsdale, Arizona. I had met Adriane years earlier at a Monarch conference and she had remembered I was a butterfly guy from Washington and thought of me when she was wondering where to donate a collection of 15 display cases of Hank Tomlinson’s butterflies! Just weeks before Adriane contacted me, your WBA Board had decided to increase our conservation and outreach focus of the organization and agreed that we needed some butterfly display cases to show at events! So, I immediately told Adriane we would be ecstatic to accept this amazing and timely donation of historical Washington butterflies!

So, just before Christmas, 15 cases totaling around 300 butterflies returned to Washington! These will be put to good use in our WBA mission of educating and enthusing people about butterflies, particularly our Washington butterflies. This is crucial because without people being interested in butterflies and invested in their conservation, the future of butterflies will be very bleak.

This amazing gift to us also has historical significance, making the donation so right for WBA! Many of the 300 butterflies came from Washington and in most cases, Hank provided details of date and location where specimens were found. These data will be harvested from the collection and entered in the Washington butterfly database curated by Jon Pelham.

Hank Tomlinson lives in Arizona now and I have expressed my thanks to him on behalf of WBA for this truly amazing gift to us and our butterfly mission in Washington. Be sure to watch out for Hank’s butterflies at future WBA events!

By David James

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