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Cracking Open a Cold One for the Butterflies

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
/
Flickr
A Bartram Scrub-Hairstreak butterfly

A new Florida beer launched last Friday, but the brew is not only for beer lovers. It’s also for butterflies.

Bartram’s Blonde Beer gets its name from the Bartram's Scrub-Hairstreak Butterfly, which is a federally endangered species. Under the Endangered Species Act of 1972, to get that severe of a marker, a species has to be at risk of complete extinction.

 

The unique method of environmentalism via brewing was made possible through a partnership between Gainesville-based First Magnitude Brewing Company and the Florida Museum of Natural History at University of Florida.

Both John Denny, the founder and head brewer at First Magnitude, and Dr. Jaret Daniels, the program director at the natural history museum’s McGuire Center forLepidopteraand Biodiversity, join Gulf Coast Live to share the tale of how beer first met butterfly.

 

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.