Posted: 03.28.2011

New Hampshire is taking a lead role in
growing a brilliant blue butterfly that's been on the federal
Endangered Species list since 1992.

State biologists found one Karner Blue Butterfly in the wild in
2000. Now, after a decade of carefully restoring part of its
unique, savannah-like habitat and monitoring the butterflies'
growth in captivity, they counted last year's population at more
than 2,600.

The butterfly, discovered in the 1940s in Karner, N.Y., by
Russian author and lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov, was once seen in
13 states in the Midwest and Northeast, and in Ontario, Canada.

Today, they can be found in seven states: New Hampshire, New
York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

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