Karner Blue: New Hampshire’s State Butterfly

By Dawn Bradbury

Big efforts for a little butterfly in New Hampshire are going strong and paying off. To further those efforts, a prescribed burn will take place near Concord this spring.

A host of state and federal agencies will coordinate a planned fire on approximately 300 acres of the pine barrens, on and around Concord Municipal Airport grounds, ideally before May 15 — the exact date

To be determined by Mother Nature. The goal is to restore or convert habitat for the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly — New Hampshire’s official state butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis, for the scientists in the crowd). Karner blue caterpillars only feed on wild blue lupine leaves.
     “The area up here on the heights has very sandy soil and that’s what is really establishing the bases of this unique ecosystem in which they live,” said Heidi Holman, a nongame biologist at Fish and Game, who oversees the Karner Blue Butterfly and Concord Pine Barrens Project. “It’s very dry and grows plants like the wild lupine, which they eat as a caterpillar.”

The prescribed burn within the conservation zones on the Concord Municipal Airport is allowed under a state-issued burn permit. Precautions will be taken to limit smoke and to ensure that the prescribed burn stays within distinct management borders. Still, smoke may create temporary visibility hazards during the burn.

“There are very, very specific parameters for when it’s safe to burn,” said Capt. Adrian Reyes of the 

New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau.

     It has to be dry enough but not too dry, for example, with the right relative humidity, and wind is a critical element. It takes a full team and a comprehensive burn plan — not to mention the patience and flexibility to wait and strike at the time the weather is right. “One of the key things here is to develop good habitat for the Karner blue butterfly and maintain it so it does really well in the pine barren environment,” Reyes said. The pine barrens are well adapted to fire as a maintenance tool for the return of natural vegetation.

Controlled burning reduces leaf litter and duff, reduces non-native vegetative species and promotes sunny and sandy openings for native pine barrens vegetation to grow. That vegetation benefits a whole host of wildlife species. A major aim of the Concord burn is to allow wild lupine to flourish in the conservation area, providing that vital food source for the Karner blue caterpillar.

In 1999, the Karner blue butterfly was thought to be extinct — extirpated — in New Hampshire. The last place it was observed was in a power line corridor in Concord.
     “It actually did disappear,” Holman said. “Extirpated is the term for a local extinction. It disappeared 

from the state as far as we can tell.”

     NH Fish and Game's Nongame Program began restoring the Concord pine barrens in 2000 and began releasing captive reared Karner blue butterflies in 2001. Periodic habitat management will always be necessary to maintain the pine barrens as a suitable habitat for Karner blue butterflies to survive.

The Karner blue was the schoolchildren’s darling — it was schoolchildren who brought the Karner blue to the attention of the New Hampshire state Legislature and got it named the state’s official butterfly in 1992, Holman said. And "Kids for Karners" started in 2000 and over the course of 15 years, thousands of Concord School kids grew lupine in their classrooms and planted it in the spring to improve habitat for 

the butterflies.

These actions, plus the efforts of local groups helping the program thrive, resulted in the successful establishment of a wild population of Karner blue butterflies. Surveys in 2016 documented the population meeting the federal recovery goal of 3,000 butterflies for the first time.

The threatened wild lupine is native to New Hampshire. It’s pretty much restricted to the pine barrens, which only exist in a few locations — in our state, there’s the one in Concord, and another near Ossipee. But the one in northern New Hampshire was never quite as herbaceous and didn’t have the lupine component, Holman said. Historically, the wild lupine thrived in the Merrimack River Valley — think the I-93 corridor, one of our most heavily developed areas. There are also pine barrens in New York, New 

Jersey and Maine.

The wild lupine, the caterpillar’s only food source, is not to be confused with the large leaf lupine, Holman said, which is often planted in conservation mixes and is commonly found around the state. Distribution of the seeds is restricted by a natural heritage bureau state agency that oversees wild plants, so residents can’t plant it in their yards. And without that food source, we’re unlikely to see the Karner 

blue — adults have a wingspan of only one inch — in the wild unless we trek some of the walking trails

at the Concord conservation easement area.

     With a handy food source in the pine barrens, it’s a perfect nesting area. The butterflies overwinter right in place and produce two generations each summer. “So, over the next few weeks the eggs that have been overwintering next to lupine or adjacent to it are going to hatch and the little caterpillars will start

feeding,” Holman said. 

     The first generation spends a long time as an egg. If eggs are laid in August and overwinter, the first generation will hatch in June. Then the second generation goes from an egg to an adult in about six 

Weeks, from mid-June to early July or August.

     “That also might make them a little more vulnerable than a species that only has one generation a year,” Holman said. What works for the first generation is different than what works for the second; the common ground, however, is their desire to find the wild lupine.

     “They can tell the compound of a plant, they can sense it,” Holman said. “So they will lay their eggs nearby.”

The 28-acre conservation easement for the Karner blue butterfly is on Chenell Drive near the Concord Airport and is managed by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. There are short walking trails, and visitors in midsummer have the chance to see the small iridescent blue wings of the Karner 

blue butterfly.

The management of the pine barrens is bigger than the Karner blue butterfly: It’s also a great place to hear and see birds such as rufous-sided towhees, catbirds and brown thrashers; there are unique snake species living there. The habitat supports over 726 butterfly and moth species.

One of them is the frosted elfin butterfly, which also relies on the lupine as a caterpillar.
“It seems to be a little more resilient than the Karner,” Holman said. “But by expanding the lupine using fire we’re making a healthy ecosystem, so it seems to have really flourished.”
     The frosted elfin is being monitored in other states to see if they need federal protection. The population status of frosteds in unknown in many locations, Holman said. But Nonwildlife Fish & Game

is practicing captive rearing just in case.

 “For us the population is good — it’s benefitting from all this work with Karners,” Holman said.
     “Karner’s like a poster child for this system and the need for fire and the rare plants but there’s over 60 species of butterfly in this acreage we manage,” she said. “There’s a whole suite of species that benefited from establishing the area that we could manage for Karners and the maintenance of the system overall,” Holman said. “That’s really where our profession has gone when we’re working on endangered species: Keep common species common.”

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How to help
Private donations have provided the foundation for the Nongame and Endangered Wildlife Program since its inception in 1988. Contributions support the on-the-ground work and enable the Nongame Program to qualify for additional funding through grants from both the State of New Hampshire and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Donations made to the Nongame Program (https://www.wildlife.state.nh.us/nongame/donate.html) are matched dollar-for-dollar by the state of New Hampshire up to $100,000 annually. The Nongame Program also receives a portion of proceeds from the sale of the NH Conservation License plate (moose plate) each year. To learn more, visit the NH Moose Plate Program online at www.mooseplate.com.