blue butterfly revival

Robert Michael Pyle is a biologist and writer who has worked in conservation biology around the world. His twenty-four books include Where Bigfoot Walks, four collections of poetry, the novel Magdalena Mountain, and a flight of butterfly books. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society. Pyle lives, writes, and studies natural history in rural southwest Washington.

While the Xerces Blue butterfly disappeared in the early 1940s, in its honor Bob founded the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Contrary to the popular conservation cliché, extinction may not always have to be forever. In the year 2000, Bob published an article he called “Resurrection Ecology” suggesting the Xerces rise again. This proposal is not entirely fictional if we endeavor to rewild ourselves and address some important implications for ethics and justice in the process.

Nature Matrix: New and Selected Essays By Robert Michael Pyle | published September 15, 2020 by Counterpoint Press https://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/nature-matrix/

The Native American Ethnobotany Database http://herb.umd.umich.edu

“Resurrection Ecology” in Butler, Tom, ed., Wild Earth 10, no. 3 (Fall 2000). Republished by the Environment & Society Portal, Multimedia Library. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/rcc_00097010_3_1.pdf

Culturally competent approaches in conservation biology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dzSglgAeq4

Music on this episode was Butterfly Launches from Spar Pole featuring Bob Pyle, Krist Novoselic and Ray Prestegard

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