Karner blues fly free
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
Set free: Kathy O’Brien, with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, blows a Karner blue butterfly — matching her blue butterfly earrings — off of her finger Thursday morning, July 15, as she releases a recently-bred batch at restored land along Curry Road in Colonie. To help propagate the endangered Karner blue, the DEC partnered with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pine Bush Preserve Commission to breed the butterflies and place them in places they once inhabited.
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
The telltale blue of the Karner butterfly glows in Thursday morning’s sun soon after its release. Twenty-four wild adult female Karners were captured in the Albany Pine Bush Preserve on May 27 and transported to the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game in Concord where the eggs they produced were raised to chrysalises and returned to the commission. The adults emerging now at the Discovery Center are released daily at sites that are too isolated for them to find on their own.
The Enterprise — Michael Koff
A newly-released Karner blue shows the underside of its wings on Thursday morning. First studied and named by zoologist and author Vladimir Nabokov in 1944, the butterfly, after a half-century of decline, can now be found at nearly 60 sites covering more than 700 acres of the 3,350-acre Albany Pine Bush Preserve.