By Deborah Schoch, Times Staff Writer
July 9, 2007  

 Amid surfers and skaters, a tiny blue butterfly has scored a telling victory in its fight against extinction.

The rare El Segundo blue has returned to two popular beaches southwest of Los Angeles where it has not been seen in decades.

This is no mere academic sighting of a rare species.

Scientists say they are surprised at the resurgence. Dozens of the rare butterflies are thriving, not in some rarefied fenced-off reserve but in public view at county beaches in Redondo Beach and Torrance.

"You could open the car door, and they could hit you in the face," said conservation expert Travis Longcore this weekend, gesturing at creatures no bigger than a thumbnail flitting a few feet away from parked SUVs.

In a month that has marked the delisting of the American bald eagle as an endangered species, news of the tiny butterfly's reappearance is stirring hope that other species will rebound as unexpectedly and publicly as this one.

The El Segundo blue, one of the region's best-known endangered species, is found nowhere in the world but the southeastern shores of Santa Monica Bay.

Scientists staved off its extinction for years by nursing or monitoring it at three sites off-limits to the public at Los Angeles International Airport, the Chevron El Segundo refinery and on private land in Torrance. They estimate the current population remains low — only in the tens of thousands — with the largest group at LAX.

Now, the butterflies seem to be declaring independence.

They forged ahead on their own to reach new native vegetation at the two beaches. There they are mating and feasting on the buckwheat nectar they crave.

That proved wrong the biologists who called the species too sedentary to fly long distances.

"They were so, 'It's not going to happen,' " recalled Monica Acosta, a horticulturalist and coordinator with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps. Then, three weeks ago, she visited the Redondo Beach site where corps workers recently added native plants.

read the rest of the article at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-butterfly9jul09,1,6571031.story?coll=la-headlines-california

Redondo Beach News

RUHS’s Simun awarded grant

Toyota and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) awarded Redondo Union High School science teacher Mary Simun a grant of 10,000 for excellence and innovation in science education. Simun was one of 50 U.S. teachers to receive the prestigious TAPESTRY grant.

As part of her project, Simun’s students will remove non-native, established vegetation from the Redondo Beach bluffs and replace it with native vegetation in an attempt to restore the coastal bluff habitat, home of the endangered Palos Verdes and El Segundo blue butterflies. Students will benefit by initiating novel projects to improve their community and the environment. Students will learn about seed germination, plant growth and reproduction, plant taxonomy, and data collection, analysis and reporting.

“Mary’s program allows students to step outside the classroom and learn about the local environment in which they live,” said Michael Rouse, corporate manager of philanthropy and community affairs for Toyota.

Simun, who has been teaching for 12 years, teaches biology to 10th through 12th graders at Redondo Unified High School, where she has taught for the past five years.

Easy Reader, April 7, 2005