CLINT POGUE SPENT 2020 grieving. There was, that pandemic summer, much to lament — the viral deaths, the shuttered businesses, the shredded social fabric. In addition to the headlined horrors, though, Pogue mourned another, more obscure tragedy, one that he faced with minimal public attention and support: the collapse of the Behren’s silverspot butterfly.
The Behren’s silverspot is the color and size of an apricot. It’s a fritillary, one of a group of butterflies whose name derives from the Latin word for “dice box,” perhaps owing to the intricate dots that mark their wings. The Behren’s once sailed through the fog-shrouded prairies that fringe California’s northern coast, sipping the nectar of goldenrod and asters. Over decades, however, development consumed its meadows, and invasive plants squeezed out the early blue violet, the caterpillars’ sole food source. Today, just one population endures, in Mendocino County. And Pogue, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is the person primarily responsible for saving it.
Every year, Pogue and his glimpse a silverspot that summer, but the sighting occurred outside of a formal survey, so it didn’t technically count. The official tally was zero. Such surveys are imperfect, yet it seemed conceivable that just a single Behren’s silverspot remained on Earth — an , the final, lonely member of a species on the brink.
