In a new book on animals in America, Wild Ones, Jon Mooallem dedicates nearly 100 pages to the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly. He describes the storied history and destruction of their habitat in the Antioch Dunes, no longer actual sand dunes due to extensive sand removal and industry. He also describes some of the famous lepidopterists, or butterfly scientists, who have loved the land and the Lange’s over the decades since it was first discovered by William Harry Lange in 1933.

Cover of Mooallem’s new book featuring Wild Equity.

On one of his jaunts to Antioch, Mooallem found himself counting butterflies alongside our own Brent Plater. The author describes Wild Equity’s case against the proposed new power plants near the wildlife refuge, which are poised to harm the butterfly through habitat destruction due to increased nitrogen deposited on the land. He muses over a conversation he had with Brent out at the dunes, and paraphrasing Brent’s words, he states, “the balance is so out of whack that every battle is now a battle of principle that can’t be forfeited.” Mooallem portrays the goal of a settlement, which could provide a comprehensive habitat restoration for the Langes Metalmark, as “yet another freak turning point” in the “chaos” the little butterfly has had to endure but to re-establish habitat rather than continue the destruction (191).

Tatzoo fellow Matt Switzer’s Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly tattoo.

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You are invited to join the Wild Equity Institute and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on a guided tour of the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge.

The Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge is home to three federally protected endangered species: the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly, the Contra Costa Wallflower, and the Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose. Because of its small size and sensitive habitat, the Refuge is only open to the public on select days. While the butterfly doesn’t start flying until late summer, this trip provides a great opportunity to explore the Refuge while the endangered wildflowers are in bloom.

Meet at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge Entrance Gate, 501 Fulton Shipyard Road, Antioch, CA 94509. Wear sturdy shoes for this sandy 1.5 mile hike. Please RSVP on our event page. Remember, you must have a free wildequity.org account and be logged-in to our site to RSVP.

The Antioch Dunes Evening Primrose, the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly, and the Contra Costa Wallflower.

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Brent Plater, Wild Equity’s Executive Director, will be interviewed on KOWS 107.3 FM’s Tommy’s Holiday Camp about Wild Equity’s work protecting people and the plants and animals within and surrounding the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge. Listen in from 7:10-8:55pm to learn what nitrogen deposition can teach us about the future of conservation.

Click here to listen to the podcast of the interview.

In a reality grantmaking panel with $1,000 on the line, program officers from the Hewlett Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the California Wildlands Grassroots Fund, the Northern California Environmental Grassroots Fund, and the Rose Foundation for Communities and the Environment evaluated grant proposals from Wild Equity and five other groups live in front of over 100 grassroots environmentalists.

And each program officer reached the same conclusion: Wild Equity’s proposal was the best of the bunch!

Check out this clip from the panel and see why so many are finding inspiration in our work:

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Wild Equity Institute is receiving its first branded products soon, and the buzz is building. For example, a focus group participant at San Francisco State University had this to say about our new “I Bird San Francisco” T-shirt:

“This shirt has value far more important than its price. How much is it worth to promote environmental protection in your community? How much is it worth to use organic clothes? The shirt is worth our entire future as a civilization.”

I Bird SF 100% organic cotton T-shirt. Comes in natural color, sizes S, M, L, & XL.

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I’m starting this note with two short stories that inspired our work this year. After reading them, I believe you’ll be inspired to become a Wild Equity Institute member, so we can continue our extraordinary work.

Recently I returned from a weekend workshop where I discussed the future of the conservation movement with giants in our field—people like Dr. Michael Soulé, the founder of the field of conservation biology; Dr. Holmes Ralston III, a luminary in the field of environmental ethics; and Terry Tempest Williams, one of our great contemporary environmental writers.

It was an honor to simply be in a room with these incredible people. But as the meeting progressed, I was humbled to see that they found inspiration in the Wild Equity Institute’s work, and are incorporating our theory of change into a new era of environmental protection and conservation.

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So far, 2012 has been extremely productive for the Wild Equity Institute. But we need you to become a Wild Equity Institute member for us to advance our mission. Take a look at what we’ve already accomplished:

• We filed a formal administrative petition to protect migratory bird nests from wanton destruction.
• We filed another to protect the San Francisco garter snake from international poachers.
• We advanced our lawsuit to protect the Antioch Dunes and surrounding communities from five power plants.
• We hosted a tailgate at Sharp Park to protest the golf course’s killing of endangered species, and then caught Assembly member Jerry Hill and San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom presenting forged assembly resolutions on Sharp Park: all while winning significant interim rulings in our lawsuit against the golf course.
• We helped students from San Francisco’s public schools see and help save endangered species.
• And we hosted dozens of Golden Gate National parks Endangered Species Big Year events, so we could hang out with you!

And this is just the beginning of what we can accomplish. We’ve got more ideas to build a sustainable and just world than we can implement by the end of the year!

But if you join the Wild Equity Institute today you can help us expand our work, engage new allies, and build a healthy and sustainable community for people and the plants and animals that accompany us on Earth. By joining us today you will help us close out 2012 with a bang:

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The Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge is in serious trouble, but artists working in diverse media are beginning to tell this landscape’s tale.

Sawyer Rose’s NATIVE: California Plants in Glass, Metal, & Light.

Sawyer Rose’s unique artwork of the Lange’s metalmark butterfly is now on display at the Inclusions Gallery, located in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights neighborhood. The Lange’s metalmark butterfly is dangerously imperiled, and will go extinct in the near future—unless we affirmatively act to save this species. The Wild Equity Institute is currently working to protect the Butterfly from harmful local pollution through legal action and public awareness.

Sawyer Rose’s lightbox featuring the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly

Tatzoo’s Save the Lange’s Metalmark Campaign.

Local forces are also mobilizing to save Lange’s: and getting a tattoo for their efforts. The Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly Tatzoo team is coordinating with the Wild Equity Institute to encourage people to pledge to spend a day saving the Lange’s Metalmark Butterfly.

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The Wild Equity Institute and the Wilderness Arts & Literacy Collaborative ("WALC") at Downtown High School recently completed another successful Endangered Species Big Semester by helping students explore the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge, learn how environmental justice victories in San Francisco are linked to a fossil fuel power plant construction boom in Antioch, and take action to help the Refuge’s endangered species recover.

WALC students remove invasive weeds at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge.
Invasive weed growth is exacerbated by pollution from power plants that ring the Dunes.

Successful environmental justice campaigns in San Francisco led to the closure of two power plants in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill and Bayview-Hunters Point communities since 2006. In part to recoup the power lost when these power plants closed, the California Energy Commission approved five power plants, all ringing the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge. The concentration of power plants in this location threatens community health and three endangered species found at the Refuge. The Wild Equity Institute is bringing environmental justice advocates and grassroots conservation organizations together to challenge this massive power plant expansion.

On WALC’s third and final trip of the Endangered Species Big Semester, students connected our successful struggles for conservation and environmental justice in San Francisco with the new fossil fuel power plants in Antioch, observed endangered species threatened by this proposal, and then took action to help these species recover.

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A recent, well-publicized study suggests that cost-effective methods for eradicating invasive weeds may harm the Lange’s metalmark butterfly, adding urgency to the Wild Equity Institute’s efforts to eliminate the underlying cause of weed growth in the species’ habitat: nitrogen deposition from power plants in the vicinity of the species’ last stand at the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge.

Effects of Herbicides on Behr’s Metalmark Butterfly, a Surrogate Species for the Endangered Butterfly, Lange’s Metalmark, published in the journal Environmental Pollution by two Washington State University entomologists and a US Fish and WIldlife Service scientist, assessed the effects on butterfly larvae of three herbicides — chemicals that are intended only to impact plants. They studied a near relative of the Lange’s metalmark butterfly. The authors applied the herbicides directly onto butterfly larvae and recorded survivorship. They found that the chemicals reduced by 1/4 to 1/3 the number of larvae surviving to pupal stage — and thus the number of healthy adults.

Nitrogen emissions from facilities like the Gateway Generating Station, above, may spell the end for three endangered species
(L-R): the Antioch Dunes evening primrose, the Lange’s metalmark butterfly, and the Contra Costa wallflower.

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