In February, I visited Shotwell’s Landing and got to see the prairie restoration crew in action. The crew is contributing to program coordinator Conrad Ely‘s thesis research for the Master of Environmental Studies program. The research builds on the work of an earlier Master’s thesis investigating how treating seeds with plant-derived smoke water, which contains many of the same chemicals present in prairie fires, can affect their germination rates and vigor—many prairie species are very difficult to propagate, and they hope to trigger germination with treatments simulating prairie fire.
After the first nursery tasks of the day, program coordinator Conrad Ely shared a presentation on the scientific method. He tied principles of research design to their shared experiment, and then to Mima Mounds enigma. He used theories on the Mima Mounds’ formation to illustrate opportunities as well as limitations of the scientific process. From their experience with prairie restoration, the crew knows the Mounds well, and they jumped in with their own thoughts and theories.
My gratitude for everything the crew does for the region’s prairies. They are employed in prairie restoration full time, and their efforts and enthusiasm make a big difference for South Sound prairies, one of the most rare and threatened landscapes in the nation.
Program coordinator Conrad Ely leads discussion of the scientific method.
Benjamin Hall brought great questions and ideas to the discussion of the Mima Mounds mystery.
Nursery technicians Robert Bowers (left) and Andrew McManus (right) track seed lots for stratification prior to spring sowing.
Conrad discusses germination rates with technicians Bobby Un (left) and Benjamin Hall (right).
The group visited the demonstration garden at the north end of Shotwell’s Landing, mostly dormant in the winter but still a pleasing site for contemplation.
by Liz Louie, SPP Butterfly Technician
Introduction by Lindsey Hamilton, SPP Butterfly Program Coordinator
Butterfly technician Elizabeth Louie worked with the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly (TCB) program at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCCW) for more than two years. She is now one of the few butterfly husbandry experts in the world. During her time at Mission Creek she made many significant contributions to the program. She streamlined data collection procedures and created an immaculately organized system for tracking daily activities and progress. She always found creative solutions to problems when resources and communication with outside expertise was limited. Lastly, as a senior butterfly technician she ensured high quality butterfly care and effectively trained and inspired incoming technicians. The program will benefit from her good work for years to come. Liz will be missed, but we are so happy for her and wish her the best in all that she pursues in life.
Liz Louie records data on pupae and butterfly weights.
The following is a blog written by Elizabeth Louie, now out of prison in work release:
It has been 26 months and three seasons, with two Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) bosses and three Department of Corrections (DOC) bosses, releasing approximately 8,000 caterpillars and 250 butterflies to the wild. I have come to the end of an amazing journey. As I leave Mission Creek and the TCB program, I want to say THANK YOU for the experience.
It seems appropriate that I’m leaving just as the caterpillars are going into diapause. All the hard work caring for larvae, pupae and eclosing butterflies, conducting breeding and collecting eggs is now done. It’s now a transition period. A period of rest before the cycle begins again, similar to the stage I’m in now. Work release, a time of transition and preparation for my final release into the community.
Liz Louie explains the details of butterfly husbandry to the University of Denver’s Institute for Human – Animal Connection. Photo by Judith Gerren
A writer from Sierra Magazine recently asked what I thought about the irony of having a butterfly program in prison; the contrast between the delicate, fragile butterfly and the “harshness” of prison life. For me, butterflies are very resilient animals. Their primary habitat was an artillery range, the aftermath of fire and destruction. Metaphorically, the butterfly symbolizes re-birth, new life and beginnings. So with that said, Mission Creek (prison) makes a lot of sense for a surrogate habitat.
Liz is demonstrating how we care for postdiapause larvae. We keep them in bins with paper bags (“mima mounds”) to climb on after they wake up from their winter slumber. Photo by Jody Becker-Green
In fact, there are other parallels between the butterflies and prison life. The larvae will sometimes go into second diapause (D2) if they feel conditions are not right. Maybe there’s not enough food, so the larvae will go back to sleep. Similar to D2 larvae, women come in and out of prison. They may not have gotten what they needed from prison the first time, or they lack outside support to help them be successful. But for me personally, at my age, its good to know that the final stage is a butterfly. It means the most beautiful stage of my life is yet to come. All the other stages have been in preparation for that final one.
Liz Louie shows inmate Samantha Turner how to remove a new pupae from a “mima mound”. This is a very delicate process.
This will be a time in my life that I won’t soon forget. The people I’ve met and the women I’ve worked with, I take away something from each of them. I’ve learned a lot about myself, both the good, and the things I need to change. I have a greater appreciation for the simple things in life. I walk away a stronger person and look forward to whatever life holds.
Inmate Liz Louie feeds a Taylor’s checkerspot honey water from a Q-tip. Photo by Benj Drummond and Sara Joy Steele.
Just like many of us head south to escape the cold dark winters of the Northwest, so do butterflies! The Pacific Northwest Monarch butterfly population is thought to overwinter in coastal California and possibly central Mexico. This species is sensitive to fir tree and milkweed declines, and past research suggests that our butterflies are having difficulty making it to their ultimate destination each winter. The current extent of the Washington population’s migration and wintering area is largely unknown.
The Santa Cruz California Monarch Aggregation. Two butterflies released just 4 days apart in August from Yakima, Washington traveled 675 miles (at least) to this same overwintering site!
Dr. David James, an associate professor at Washington State University (WSU) is studying this migration to learn more. In collaboration with the Washington State Penitentiary (WSP) in Walla Walla, volunteers and inmates raise thousands of Monarch butterflies to be tagged and released every fall. Each butterfly carries a small, light-weight sticker showing an ID number and an email address. After release, they wait until a stranger in the south makes contact to tell them where their butterflies have landed.
Washington State Penitentiary Monarch Butterfly Rearing 2012
David James explaining monarch biology to inmates at WSP.
On November 22nd an observer counting Monarchs in Goleta, California found a butterfly that was tagged at WSP. Goleta is 825 straight line miles from Walla Walla! This is the longest travel distance recorded for a Washington Monarch making this the most important re-sighting to date! Previous recoveries proved migration only as far south as San Francisco.
One of the 50 monarchs released from Yakima in October.
This is a great example of how the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) model of collaborative partnerships with prisons allows multiple partners to participate in conservation efforts that reach far beyond Washington State. SPP staff at The Evergreen State College would like to congratulate WSU and WSP on this great achievement! We look forward to learning more about where our Monarchs travel in the coming years. To track the Monarch project yourself, follow their Facebook page.
By SPP Taylor’s checkerspot program coordinator Lindsey Hamilton
At Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCCW) four inmate technicians raise Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies as a contribution to the recovery of this prairie species. Following the direction of the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon, they have been successfully rearing and breeding these butterflies for three years. This butterfly was federally listed in October of 2013, which means that anyone working with this species is now held to high accountability and rigorous reporting. The technicians at MCCCW have always been successful at collecting detailed data on all phases of butterfly husbandry.
The Oregon Zoo recently created an Access database that will store all rearing and breeding information for both facilities in one place. This database will increase the quality of all data collected and provide for efficient access for tracking trends and bi-annual reporting.
This has created a new opportunity for the technicians at MCCCW to learn the skill of data entry and management using Access. A computer containing this database was set up in a common living area within the facility last fall, and as simple as this sounds, it represents a major accomplishment for a prison environment! The inmate technicians will now be able to directly enter their data from the program . The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly program coordinator for SPP, Lindsey Hamilton, will then extract the data via USB and send it to the Oregon Zoo. Butterfly rearing is seasonal work, and the technicians usually have little to do in the off season. With the 2 years of back logged data that needs to be entered, the technicians will stay busy this winter when our caterpillars are sleeping.
An inmate helping to burn the demonstration garden ducks to avoid the smoke as he moves burning logs across the ground. Photo by Jaal Mann.
Last month, as part of the ongoing cultivation of the demonstration prairie garden at Shotwell’s Landing nursery, the inmate prairie restoration crew got to burn an area for seeding with native species.
They used the technique of building a large burn pile and then raking the burning wood along until the entire desired area had been burned. They will be using the area to compare different seeding methods; they want to see which technique most reduces bird predation, knowledge that could help landowners succeed with their small-scale prairie restoration projects.
The crew had a lot of fun and it’s exciting that they are able to be involved with the project from start to finish! We’re looking forward to seeing some species beginning to flower this spring.
Jaal Mann
CNLM’s Audrey Lamb and an inmate on the prairie conservation crew rake fire through the demonstration garden. Photo by Jaal Mann.
As others observe the progress, an inmate and CNLM’s Audrey Lamb rake burning pieces of wood along the ground to simulate a natural fire moving along the landscape. Photo by Jaal Mann.
This past week Shotwell’s Landing hosted visitors from the USFWS, Dr. Karla Drewson and Ted Thomas, and David Hays from WDFW. They admired the more than 100,000 plants for fall plant out and marveled at the amount of seed being cleaned and processed for the restoration of Puget lowland prairies. The site visit also coincided with a work day for the offender technicians. The technicians apprised the visitors of the cultivation techniques for some of the 26 species of native prairie plants grown at Shotwell’s Landing.
Shotwell’s Landing nursery has always been a highly collaborative site for SPP, serving as a hub for seed cleaning, storage, and plant distribution to our many partners.
David Hays (WDFW), Karla Drewson (USFWS), and Ted Thomas (USFWS) discuss Castilleja miniata (giant red Indian paintbrush) plants for prairie propagation.
At the heart of SPP’s work at Shotwell’s Landing lies the partnership between the Center for Natural Lands Management (CNLM) and SPP. CNLM owns the site and manages seed production and cleaning, and SPP manages plant production for both direct planting on the prairies and future seed production. Offender technician crews from Cedar Creek Corrections Center provide essential assistance at Shotwell’s Landing to all partners (as well as at several other prairie restoration sites around the area).
David Hays, land manager for WDFW, shows his enthusiasm for the greatly increased yields…
…of rare Plectritis congesta seed at Shotwell’s Landing nursery. Photos by Jaal Mann.
Key partners who use plant materials produced and processed at Shotwell’s Landing include the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Ted Thomas and Karla Drewson, USFWS, stopped to discuss the planting of wild Virginia strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) with SPP graduate research assistant Drissia Ras and an inmate from Cedar Creek Corrections Center. These plants will be used for planting on prairies in endangered Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly habitat.
by Bri Morningred, SPP Graduate Research Assistant and SPP Coordinator for Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) conservation nursery
photos by Shauna Bittle
Heading out for a tour of SPP programs, passing the gorgeous gardens at WCCW
It was a beautiful day in Gig Harbor, WA, perfect for the celebration of the amazing sustainability programs at Washington Correction Center for Women (WCCW). We had prepared for the celebration for months, and it was gratifying to share with partners and the public the many contributions offenders have made to a sustainable prison community.
Restoration and Conservation Coordinator Carl Elliott describes the SPP conservation nursery program at WCCW
The tour began with introductions from the superintendent of WCCW, Jane Parnell, and from Carri LeRoy and Carl Elliott of SPP. The tour’s first stop was the Conservation Nursery hoop houses at the minimum security campus. Attendees had a chance to watch the conservation nursery crew at work, walk through the carpet of Indian paintbrush (Castilleja hispida) that was beautifully in bloom, and speak with the SPP staff and offender technicians about the conservation nursery program.
Outside and inside of one of the hoop houses in the conservation nursery
Scott Skaggs, Construction and Maintenance Project Supervisor and WCCW manager of the conservation nursery crew, demonstrates monitoring for insect damage on Indian paintbrush
SPP Graduate Research Assistant Bri Morningred enjoys a high five with an offender technician in the conservation nursery
Indian paintbrush thriving in the conservation nursery
Next up was the community gardens on the way to medium security campus. This leg of the tour was led by Ed Tharp, who runs the Horticulture Program at WCCW. These gardens are in the courtyard area of the minimum security campus and grow a variety of foods that are harvested for the prison’s kitchen.
Ed Tharp, Tacoma Community College, runs the horticultural program at WCCW
The final tour stop was in the concrete courtyard of the medium security campus. Located next to the education building—which houses the horticulture classroom, the floral program, and many other wonderful educational programs—there are various garden beds growing onions, garlic, and strawberries.
Enjoying the strawberry beds at WCCW
Assistant Superintendent for WCCW David Flynn, the champion of many SPP programs for the facility, talks to the group about recent activities
The tour visits gardens in the close custody area of WCCW; Audrey Lamb, Conservation Assistant at the Center for Natural Lands Management, in the foreground
We ended with a poster session and awards ceremony in the gymnasium. We ate prison-grown salad and strawberries and cupcakes decorated with prairie flowers. Attendees toured informational tables for many of the sustainable programs at WCCW, including the Prison Pet Partnership Program, Mother Earth Farms, the Horticulture Program, Food Services, the Recycling Program, Sustainability in Prisons Project, and Center for Natural Lands Management.
SPP’s Carl Elliott receives fresh garden salad at the poster session
Melissa Johnson, publicity and outreach for WCCW, admires the horticultural program display at the poster session
Best cupcakes ever! SPP’s Bri Morningred collaborated with a local bakery to produce native plant-decorated cupcakes for the celebration. They also tasted great!
Jane Parnell, Superintendent of WCCW, presents an offender technician with a certificate of appreciation at an awards ceremony
An offender technician on the conservation nursery crew shows a certificate of appreciation recognizing her dedication to the program
It was wonderful to get to recognize the amazing things happening at WCCW. The prisons community is taking great strides toward sustainable living and it is inspiring to work with them towards that goal.
By Dennis Aubrey, Brittany Gallagher, and Andrea Martin
Brittany Gallagher, Dennis Aubrey, and Andrea Martin in Canada for CONFOR West.
In late April three SPP Graduate Research Assistants attended CONFOR West, an annual conference in Western Canada highlighting environmental science, forestry, and collaborative conservation. This year the SPPers, along with another Evergreen Masters of Environmental Studies student, were the only four students from the United States.
This year the conference was held in Kananaskis, Alberta, in the spectacular Canadian Rockies just southeast of Banff. The four of us chose to drive together rather than fly, both to save money and to gain a better appreciation for the landscape and culture of the region. The first night we stopped and soaked in Radium Hot Springs, near the entrance to Kootenay National Park. The next morning we drove up into the Kootenay high country, where we saw a large bull moose crossing a river, and over 50 white-tailed and mule deer browsing near the road in meadows newly emerged from the melting snowpack. After crossing a few passes and traversing northward through long valleys, we made our way up and over the continental divide, simultaneously entering Alberta and Banff National Park. It was still early in the day so before heading south to Kananaskis we turned north and drove about 75km up the famed Icefields Parkway, where we snapped pictures of hanging glaciers and frozen lakes amid towering frosted peaks.
The conference itself was set at the Canadian Rockies and Foothills Biogeoscience Institute, and consisted of two mornings of presentations followed by afternoon activities, with poster sessions and keynote speakers in the evenings. Morning-session presentations were in two formats: 5-minute lightning talks and 15-minute featured presentations. Lightning talks at CONFOR are doubly challenging, as they include self-advancing PowerPoint slides, making practice and timing essential. Some general themes that emerged from the talks given by Canadian students were related to mountain pine bark beetles, tar-sands impacts and mitigation, and involving First Nations peoples in collaborative conservation.
All three SPP graduate students gave presentations on our thesis work. Both Brittany and Andrea took the challenge and gave well-received lightning talks. Brittany presented on her work with the Sustainability in Prisons Project evaluating the effectiveness of environmental, educational, and sustainability programs in Washington state prisons. Andrea talked about evaluating the effectiveness of youth conservation corps leadership programs. Dennis gave a 15-minute presentation which included an overview of the Sustainability in Prisons Project, and a brief discussion of his research with incarcerated women exploring Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies’ use of golden paintbrush. At the end of the conference, Dennis’ presentation was voted best 15-minute presentation and mentioned as a close second for most creative presentation overall.
Another unique aspect of CONFOR West is that it is planned and attended solely by graduate students. This tends to give it a more casual and festive atmosphere than other scientific conferences. Groups went snowshoeing and hiking in the mountains, and informal discussion groups formed in the common area and dining hall. Overall, the trip was a rewarding and educational experience. Many fellow attendees commented enthusiastically on the novelty of SPP, and some expressed interest in the idea of bringing SPP to Canadian correctional institutions. Some of the relationships and perspectives we gained will undoubtedly serve us in the future, allowing us to more effectively collaborate with our colleagues across the border.
Over 3500 caterpillars were at Mission Creek, waiting to be released
Diapause Survival
Congratulations and thanks are in order for the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly technicians and staff at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCCW), and everyone else who supports the program at Evergreen, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the Oregon Zoo. To recap, last season we produced 3624 eggs, which was 180% of our target, then the caterpillars that hatched from those eggs reached summer diapause with 96.6% survivorship. For eight months they have been sleeping in small insect cups beneath overturned terra cotta pots, but now they are awake again and the numbers are in: 98.9% diapause survival.
Fifteen Taylor’s checkerspot caterpillars waiting to be released
After spending the summer being pampered by the inmate technicians at Mission Creek, the bulk of our caterpillars were transported to the established diapause facility at the Oregon Zoo. Five hundred were left behind as a trial group since it was our first season and we wanted to test the over-winter conditions at the greenhouse before risking a whole cohort. Of those five hundred, 100% survived! As always, our success is a credit to the meticulous, dedicated, and compassionate care provided by the inmate technicians. Every step of the way they have gone the extra mile, checking every detail twice as often as required, keeping records that no one ever asked them to take, and proving with every stage’s success that the faith placed in their abilities by our partners was well warranted.
Two teams releasing caterpillars at Glacial Heritage Preserve, near Littlerock, Wa
Post-diapause release
About 3400 of our federally threatened caterpillars are now munching leaves on the prairies at Glacial Heritage Preserve and Scatter Creek Wildlife Area, raising the total number of animals released the butterfly program at MCCCW from 701 to over 4000! Our biggest release of the year is just a week after diapause wake-up, so we had a wild week at MCCCW trying to feed breakfast to so many animals. Our supply of food plants was dwindling rapidly, but relief was in sight: sunny weather was forecast for Monday, March 4. We filled up seven coolers with caterpillar cups and sent them out to the prairie. Once there, a team of about ten biologists, students, and volunteers spent the day crawling backwards from host plant to host plant depositing 2-5 caterpillars on each one. It’s a painstaking process, but it’s important to make sure that the animals have enough host plant material to give them a good chance of making it to pupation, sometime in April.
SPP Graduate Research Assistant Dennis Aubrey helping caterpillars find new homes
Just 185 caterpillars remain in the captive colony at MCCCW. These are considered our “backup breeders”. We will raise them to adulthood so that we can rely on them for eggs if anomalous weather or some other unforeseen event causes wild populations to crash. Every year we aim to produce a new generation from wild-caught females, but the colony of backup breeders is arranged to maintain maximum possible genetic diversity for as long as possible just in case. The butterfly technicians at MCCCW are out there every day taking care of those 185 special recruits, giving them fresh leaves and raising them up like athletes in case they have to pitch in to help save their species.
Taylor’s checkerspot caterpillars enjoying some tasty leaves after being released
Butterfly Techs at Mission Creek Helping with the Evergreen Environmental Observation Network
By Dennis Aubrey, SPP Graduate Research Assistant & Taylor’s checkerspot program coordinator
While the Taylor’s checkerspot caterpillars at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women are sleeping under terra cotta pots for the winter, the inmate butterfly techs on the project have not been idle. They’ve helped to write season ending reports, compile data, produce rearing protocols, and last week they started helping with an ongoing ecological study through The Evergreen State College and the Evergreen Environmental Observation Network (EEON).
Evergreen sits on 1,000 acres of second growth lowland temperate rainforest, and EEON is a series of 44 fixed long-term study plots within this forest. Students and faculty conduct a wide range of research projects using the network, and the latest involves bigleaf maple leaves and the tar spot fungus (Rhytisma punctatum).
Tar spot fungus is not well studied in Pacific Northwest forests, but it has a fascinating life history. It infects the new maples leaves each year, and creates a small dark spot where it is somehow able to hijack the photosynthetic machinery of the leaf. As the trees try to reabsorb precious chlorophyll with the onset of autumn (the reason leaves change color) to store over the winter, the tar spots are able to hold on to a last bit of green. Dr. Carri LeRoy, co-director of the SPP, is interested in understanding how the higher nutrients remaining in the infected areas interact with the fungal tissue to influence rates of leaf litter decomposition.
Research at The Evergreen State College is examining this question (LeRoy et al. 2011, Freshwater Biology), and in the meantime there is also much to learn about the fungus’ population structure and spatial distribution. The inmates at Mission Creek are examining leaf litter from the EEON plots to try to gain a better understanding of how it varies across the forest landscape. They are sorting the leaves, removing tar spots and weighing both the tar spots and the remaining leaf material. This will provide a measurement of relative biomass in 44 locations. Meanwhile, Evergreen students are working on quantifying forest stand structure in the plots so that tar spot density can be compared to the percentage of maple trees in each location.
This collaborative work provides real involvement in science to the inmates and also much-needed lab support to EEON. As usual, the butterfly technicians at Mission Creek have been meticulous and dedicated research partners.
Inmate butterfly technicians examine maple leaves and tar spot fungus through a dissection microscope. Photo by D. Aubrey.
