Babbitt praises butterfly protection

Businesses, agencies cooperate on plan affecting Karner Blue

By The Associated Press
and Leader-Telegram staff

-

An agreement to protect the Karner blue butterfly in Wisconsin could be used as a model for saving endangered species elsewhere in the nation, the U.S. interior secretary said.

    Bruce Babbitt was scheduled to speak this afternoon at the Sandhill Wildlife Area in the Wood County community of Babcock, where the pact to protect the endangered butterfly is to be signed.

    Pam Rasmussen, an environmental analyst with Northern States Power who worked on the Karner habitat plan and will attend the signing, said NSP is happy with the agreement because it can do business and protect the butterflies with a minimum of red tape.

    Unlike the case of the spotted owl in the Northwest, which has been contentious, the Karner blue management plan has been a cooperative effort involving private businesses and governmental agencies, she said.

    "In the end we got a good compromise on how to

coordinate our business activities and protect the butterfly," she said. "We started in 1993, so it's been a long haul."

    The Eau Claire County Forest is one of six or seven county forests in central Wisconsin that have prime Karner blue habitat.

    Without the agreement the county is restricted in cuting in areas where the butterflies are found, even though some timber harvests are needed to maintain habitat for the butterfly, said John Staszcuk, administrator of the county forest.

    Early in the process the county joined a team of public agencies and private companies working on the habitat management plan for the butterfly, which was a good decision, Staszcuk said.

    "It's been very time consuming, but the outcome is positive because now we've got an agreement that's acceptable to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service," he said.

    The light blue, thumbnail-size butterfly roams an area stretching from Menominee and Shawano counties to Wood and Adams counties.

    The butterfly, which relies on wild lupine plants during its larval stage, once was found from New York to western Wisconsin, but logging and development have almost completely eliminated the butterfly from anywhere but Wisconsin.

    Babbitt praised the state's approach, which relies on the cooperation of corporate and private landowners to help protect the areas where the butterflies live.

    The Karner plan provides protection on 265,000 acres of public and private land in mostly central Wisconsin.

    Agreements among 26 partners, including paper and power companies, took five years of negotiating.

    The plan focuses less on individual butterflies than it does on the habitats necessary for their survival.

    The agreement that was scheduled to be signed today allows landowners with Karner habitat to kill some butterflies in the course of doing business if they agree to work at protecting and even increasing the overall acreage on which Karner blue butterflies can live.