FROM THE TOP of Pigeon Butte in western Oregon’s William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, the full width of the Willamette Valley fits into a gaze. Slung between the Coast Range and the Cascades, the valley is checkered with farmland: grass-seed fields, hazelnut orchards, vineyards. In the foreground, however, grassy meadows scattered with wildflowers and occasional oaks trace the land’s contours.
Upland prairie landscapes like these once covered 685,000 acres of the Willamette Valley. By 2000, only a 10th of 1% remained. Their disappearance has meant the decline of countless species that once thrived here; some are endangered, others have disappeared. Among the nearly lost is a nickel-sized butterfly called Fender’s blue.
Endemic to this valley, Fender’s blue was first collected in 1929. Shortly thereafter, it vanished, and, for 50 years, no one could find the sapphire-winged insect; it was presumed extinct. But in 1988, a 12-year-old boy netted a few in a meadow outside Eugene, and a lepidopterist officially rediscovered the butterfly the following year. It was added to the endangered species list in 2000, when fewer than 3,400 remained.
Now, the butterfly’s population has quadrupled and the species is slated to be downlisted from endangered to threatened. If this status change is finalized, as is expected to happen this year, Fender’s blue will become only the second insect to have recovered in the history of the Endangered Species Act.
I’d come to the Pigeon Butte prairie one May morning in search of Fender’s blue
