Maryland’s official insect, the Baltimore checkerspot, wears its state pride on its wings. “It looks like you took our flag and stamped it on a butterfly,” says John Garrison, a biologist and the conservation director at the Susquehannock Wildlife Society (SWS) in Harford County. The insect’s range reaches up to Canada, and it was once found all over Maryland. But degradation and loss of the butterfly’s wetland habitat, coupled with climate change and overgrazing by deer, mean the remaining populations now inhabit just twenty sites in western and central parts of the state. To help, the SWS is restoring wetlands by removing invasives and planting the butterfly’s host plant, white turtlehead, as well as bringing in caterpillars to try to jump-start new populations. One such site sits near the new SWS wildlife center, opening this fall; there, visitors can see exhibitions on the butterfly’s life cycle and observe checkerspots in rearing pens. “It would be a tragedy to lose our state insect,” says Scott McDaniel, the SWS’s cofounder and executive director. “They’re a beautiful species, and we want people to connect with them.”
Southern Agenda