Bleached sandhill skipper in the meadows at Baltazor Hot Spring in Humboldt County. (Photo courtesy Patrick Donnelly/Center for Biological Diversity)
A rare tiny butterfly found only in a remote stretch of Northern Nevada will soon gain federal protections under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that the bleached sandhill skipper, a small golden-orange butterfly that typically measures under 2 inches long, warrants federal protections as an endangered or threatened species.
The agency is now opening a 60-day public comment period on a proposed rule to list the rare butterfly, after determining the bleached sandhill skipper is at risk of extinction due to ongoing threats from climate change and groundwater pumping.
Increasing temperatures and a lack of rainfall have made the butterfly’s habitat warmer and drier than what’s suitable for the insect in recent years. Higher temperatures are already causing direct impacts to the health of individual butterflies and entire populations, according to the agency.
“It is a beautiful little butterfly, found in just a few quiet places in Nevada,” said Lara Enders, a fish and wildlife biologist with USFWS in Reno. “In reviewing the information available, we found that at least one population has declined substantially in the last 10 years.”
Bleached sandhill skippers are known to exist only in three populations within a 14-mile area in northern Humboldt County. About 85% of the skipper’s populations live on public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The larval stage of the rare butterfly heavily depends on saltgrass for food, a host plant found in their alkali meadow habitat. Adult bleached sandhill skippers rely on nearby rabbitbrushes as their nectar source. Both plants and the rare butterfly require suitable temperatures and moisture levels to maintain appropriate conditions.
“The data indicate warming temperatures in this part of Nevada directly affects this species survival and ability to reproduce,” said Enders. “We also found that the changes in climate patterns, coupled with groundwater pumping, are contributing to the drying out of the alkali meadow communities that the bleached sandhill skipper calls home.”
The listing comes after a one-year “status review” launched in response to a petition filed in 2022 by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect the small butterfly.
“The bleached sandhill skipper is a miracle in the desert, and this is a big step toward preserving a unique butterfly adapted to the harsh conditions of alkali wetlands,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “The wetlands these butterflies need to survive will dry up and blow away unless we can protect the water that sustains them.”
The listing could also cause regulatory headaches for a geothermal power plant project that plans to tap into underground hot springs near the species’ habitat at the Baltazor Hot Springs near the Nevada-Oregon border.
A proposed power plant by Ormat Technologies would not be in the butterfly’s wetland habitat, but the Center for Biological Diversity argued in its petition to list the species for federal protection last year that tapping the underground hot springs for geothermal energy was likely to affect the flows into the springs that support plants the butterflies rely on for laying eggs or feeding on nectar.
“The bleached sandhill skipper needs the same thing to survive that we do: water,” said Donnelly. “With these endangered species protections, we aren’t just protecting charming little butterflies and their wetland habitat. We’re protecting the water that sustains all life in the desert, including our own.”
Nevada currently has two endangered butterfly species: the Mount Charleston blue butterfly, which is found in the Spring Mountains, and the Carson wandering skipper, whose habitat stretches from the valleys south of Carson City up to Susanville, California.