American Botanist Restores an Endangered Species and Reintroduces It in San Francisco

The development of our civilization, including rapid growth of cities, endangers a number of plant and animal species. Fortunately, there are some people who have decided to face the problem.

San Francisco is a big city with population of over 800,000 people. This is not an easy place to live for butterflies. Battus philenor, a butterfly native to North America, is one of the species to be spotted there less and less frequently. Tim Wong, a biologist and a wildlife lover, is perfectly aware of the problem. In spite of all the urbanization trends he decided to restore the population of the butterfly and bring it back to the city.

Battus philenor is a beautiful butterfly with black wings, sometimes opalescent blue. On leaves and stalks they lay their small red and orange eggs. Black caterpillars hatch out from the eggs and later on they turn into butterflies. It was just several years ago when the butterflies were pretty common in the City of Angels. Unfortunately, the development of our civilization put their habitat at risk.

Butterflies are Tim Wong's true passion. He first got interested in them in elementary school. What he finds the most fascinating is their ability to transform. He discovered that the Battus philenor caterpillars eat the plant called Aristolochia californica, growing in the northern part of California. He bought a couple of seedlings from the San Francisco botanical garden and planted it in his private greenhouse on his own backyard.

The next step was to keep 20 caterpillars. As time went on, he managed to get hundreds of butterflies which found home in his greenhouse. This miraculous experiment once again proves the fact that the nature has the ability to regenerate. It only needs favorable conditions.