Hiker blue because his butterfly isn’t

Launce Rake

Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006 | 8:01 a.m.

It's blue! It's fluttering by! It's on Mount Charleston! Could it be the elusive Mount Charleston blue butterfly?

Probably not, UNR biologist Dennis Murphy said Tuesday, even though it may not make a lot of difference to the casual observer.

Murphy has researched wildlife - and specifically butterflies - in the Spring Mountains and throughout the state. He and fellow researchers sought, but were unable to find, a single member of the Mount Charleston blue subspecies over the summer.

The target butterfly, which a California group has proposed for federal listing as an endangered species, looks like several other common blue-winged butterflies on Mount Charleston and the rest of the Spring Mountains, Murphy said.

Jeff Bradach, who frequently hikes the trails on the northeast side of Mount Charleston, thought he saw - and photographed - a Mount Charleston blue in late June while hiking the Bristlecone Trail.

The trail, maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, winds around peaks near the top of Lee Canyon.

"I saw several specimens like that on that day," said Bradach, who works in the Las Vegas Valley for Nevada Beverage Co. but tries to get up to the mountains to hike a couple of times a week, especially in the summer. "I've never seen one. It was very unusual that particular day There was just a ridiculous amount of butterflies."

Bradach believes he may have seen three Mount Charleston blues.

Another observer saw what she believed was a Mount Charleston blue in Fletcher Canyon, and another saw "millions" of the insects at the top of Rainbow Canyon Boulevard.

The butterflies probably were blue and were on Mount Charleston, but were "more likely to be any one of at least a half-dozen similarly lavender butterflies," Murphy said.

Murphy believes that environmental cues from a series of extreme weather seasons combined with habitat loss have stressed the Mount Charleston blue. For those or other potentially unknown reasons, the insects failed to mature from eggs into caterpillars and finally to the blue-winged butterflies.

He said the possibility that the butterflies didn't mature this summer is preferable to another option - that the Mount Charleston blue is extinct. Murphy said he hopes someone will provide evidence that the blue butterfly is still on the mountain.

According to Murphy and other scientists who have studied the insect, the Mount Charleston blue is found only on high alpine meadows, above 7,500 feet. The higher elevations are where its food source - pollen from milkvetch, a flowering plant - is found.

Murphy said he is "99.9 percent certain" that Bradach's photograph is of a Spring Azure echo blue, a species found throughout the Southwest.

Bradach said he's disappointed the butterfly he photographed doesn't appear to be a Mount Charleston blue.

"I was hoping it was, not for my personal gratification, but for the sake of the species," he said.

Bradach promised to keep trying: "Now I'm on a mission. Now I have to see one. I will keep an eye out."