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Keys Refuge Managers Plan Burns To Benefit Butterflies

The Bartram's Hairstreak butterfly is found only on pine rocklands in Miami-Dade and the Keys. It was added to the Endangered Species List last year.
Jimi Sadle
/
National Park Service
The Bartram's Hairstreak butterfly is found only on pine rocklands in Miami-Dade and the Keys. It was added to the Endangered Species List last year.

Federal wildlife managers in the Florida Keys are planning controlled burns on Big Pine Key this summer to help the Bartram's hairstreak butterfly.

The Bartram's Hairstreak butterfly is found only on pine rocklands in Miami-Dade and the Keys. It was added to the Endangered Species List last year.
Credit Jimi Sadle / National Park Service
/
National Park Service
The Bartram's Hairstreak butterfly is found only on pine rocklands in Miami-Dade and the Keys. It was added to the Endangered Species List last year.

The inch-long butterfly was added to the federal Endangered Species Listlast August. It lives only in pinerocklandsand only a few fragments of that habitat remain in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

The Bartram's Hairstreak relies on the pineland croton as a host plant. The butterflies lay their eggs on the plant and the larvae eat the leaves.

Without fires, pine rocklands turn into hardwood hammocks, where big trees provide too much shade for the shrubby plants. Occasional wildfires used to keep that succession in check. Now wildlife managers use controlled burns.

The fires help open up the canopy so the sun can reach the shrubbier plants like the crotons, said Nancy Finley, manager of the national wildlife refuges in the Keys including the National Key Deer Refuge on Big Pine. The fires also add nutrients to the soil and remove leaf litter that can smother seedlings.

Finley said the burns will take place on about 10 acres at a time and only when the soil is moist after recent rain.

Copyright 2020 WLRN 91.3 FM. To see more, visit WLRN 91.3 FM.

Nancy Klingener covers the Florida Keys for WLRN. Since moving to South Florida in 1989, she has worked for the Miami Herald, Solares Hill newspaper and the Monroe County Public Library.