The mottled duskywing butterfly, found only in a handful of habitats in Ontario, was vanishing at an alarming rate – until a rescue team that included researchers from the University of Guelph intervened.
That story is captured in the new documentary Butterflies on the Brink: The Story of the Mottled Duskywing, which will have its public premiere this October.
The 47-minute film follows the work of the Ontario Butterfly Species at Risk Recovery Team, which includes Dr. Ryan Norris of U of G’s College of Biological Science, Natural Resource Solutions Inc. biologist and team chair Jessica Linton and executive director of Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory Adrienne Brewster.
For the last several years, the team has been working to reintroduce the mottled duskywing, declared endangered in Canada in 2012, back to the Pinery Provincial Park on Lake Huron.
At the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory, researchers attempted to raise thousands of duskywings to reintroduce them into their natural habitat. The resulting documentary captures the setbacks of the team, as well as their ultimate triumph.
Mottled duskywing butterflies ‘alive and well’
“The butterflies are alive and well,” Norris says. “As one of the larger sites reached capacity, we started seeing them in places in the park we had never seen them in before. This was the first year that we didn’t introduce new individuals, and all signals point to a sustainable population.”
Duskywing numbers declined as development decimated their oak savannah and tallgrass prairie homes. The two plants the butterfly relies on, New Jersey tea and prairie redroot, declined with them due to overgrazing by white-tailed deer.
In 2020, U of G researchers were awarded federal funding to reintroduce the duskywing to two locations: Pinery Provincial Park on southern Lake Huron and Norfolk County on Lake Erie.
Two years later, nine duskywings at the Pinery Provincial Park were spotted for the first time in 30 years, a momentous achievement featured in The Globe and Mail. Early reactions to this milestone are captured in the film.
Funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Alliance grant, the restoration project was part of a broader initiative to build university research collaborations with industry or non-profit partners.
U of G worked with Natural Resource Solutions Inc., a consulting company based in Waterloo, Ont., and others.
Norris says all of the partners have been crucial.
“The film’s producers at Pinegrove Productions took a risk with us, because we didn’t know if the project would be successful,” Norris says.
He adds, “It all came together because of the foresight Jessica Linton had in bringing everyone together. This would not have happened without the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory, who really took the lead in the rearing, and Wildlife Preservation Canada, who helped monitor the population at the Pinery.”
Researchers turn to next threatened butterfly
The butterflies’ recovery has made researchers optimistic about their future restoration projects.
They will now work on restoring the duskywing in Norfolk County, a challenging location as one of the sites, a restored tobacco field, is unlike the established habitat at the Pinery.
“This would be a second milestone because we’re reintroducing this endangered butterfly to a site that not long ago didn’t even exist,” Norris says.
Knowledge from this study has helped researchers hone their rearing protocol, their collaborations with multiple organizations and their technical skills in working with butterflies in captivity, Norris says.
The team will use this experience as they turn their attention to other threatened butterflies.
“Our next goal is the frosted elfin,” Norris says. “We’re putting a grant together to reintroduce this butterfly species into Canada, which disappeared completely from Canada over 30 years ago.”
As the only researchers in Canada working on the active reintroduction of butterflies, Norris and his team have challenging years ahead. But their efforts are crucial for building a biodiverse and sustainable future, improving life, one butterfly at a time.
Tickets for screenings at Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo can be purchased at the links below. After each show, members of the cast and crew will host a Q&A for viewers to learn more about their story.