Prairie & Oak
Working with US Fish & Wildlife Service Partners for Fish & Wildlife Program, we support private landowners as they expand and maintain prairie habitats for threatened Fender’s blue and Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies in the Wren recovery zone. Council staff and local contractors remove woody vegetation encroaching on prairie sites, including Douglas fir and Scotch broom. Tall, non-native grasses crowd out the nectar-rich, native wildflowers favored by listed butterflies, and those are controlled by mowing and judicious use of herbicides. Beginning in 2011, we have worked with landowners to re-introduce Kincaid’s lupine and nectar plant species.
Our goal is to reduce butterfly habitat isolation and fragmentation by building connections across private lands to link conservation lands owned by Greenbelt Land Trust, Benton County, and others.