Copper Hermes

The Hermes Copper butterfly (Lycaena hermes) is native to the area we live in — over the past seven years, I’ve spotted them four or five times. The species is rare, and getting rarer, as its habitat is either developed or burned by wildfires.

In 2004, shortly after the Cedar Fire, environmentalist David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Hermes Copper as “endangered”. Yesterday, the Center issued a press release that said in part:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that is rejecting conservationists’ request to protect two imperiled butterflies from San Diego County under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The decision comes in response to a detailed scientific request, or “petition,” that the butterflies be added to the federal list of endangered species, which the Center for Biological Diversity submitted in October 2003. The petition was filed on the third anniversary of wildfires that caused serious harm to the two species. Today’s decision follows the Center’s 2005 lawsuit over the agency’s failure to respond to the request.

The press release continues with the usual anti-Bush propaganda, though it does mention in passing that David Hogan also petitioned to list the Hermes Copper in 1991 — and was denied “on a technicality” by the Clinton administration.

The reality is just a bit more complex than the environmentalists would have you believe…

A major premise of the recent petition (which is available from multiple locations online) is that the Cedar Fire destroyed much of the remaining Hermes Copper habitat. This premise, to put it mildly, is not a consensus view of scientists. With very little googling effort, I found several press reports from after the fire, of relieved biologists reporting that much of the Copper Hermes habitat survived intact. To be sure, there are also many scientists echoing David Hogan’s contention — but every such report I could find quoted scientists expressing concern before anyone actually went in and looked. The positive reports, on the other hand, were all made by scientists who actually went in and examined the habitat (and spotted the butterflies as well). In fact, one of the largest Hermes Copper habitats lies just southwest of us (the Rancho Jamul Ecological Preserve), and it did not burn. Another large habitat is just west of us (the Sycuan Peak Ecological Preserve), and it also did not burn. So it seems quite credible to me that the Hermes Copper escaped disaster in the Cedar Fire, and therefore the premise of this most recent petition is, at a minimum, suspect.

It’s interesting to note that while the Hermes Copper is threatened, many other closely related gossamer-winged Copper species are not — including four other Coppers native to San Diego County. Also, the Hermes Copper is dependent on a single (non-threatened) chapparal plant that is adapted to fire — it’s a “pioneer” plant that quickly propagates in burned areas. By extension, the Hermes Copper is indirectly fire-adapted as well.

The environmentalists have notoriously adopted the Endangered Species Act as a tool to have the courts enforce their anti-development agenda. They’ve been caught red-handed making petitions based on shaky or even fraudulent data, making it clear that their objective was to stop development, and not protecting an actually threatened species. The environmentalists have also been embarrassed by revelations — uncontested — that they have engaged in “species hunts” to find plausibly threatened species on land that they’d like to protect.

These shenanigans make it necessary for an intellectually honest conservationist to be skeptical of any petition arising from the environmentalist community. It’s unfortunate, but true, that they cannot be trusted.

And then of course there’s the tough issue that the environmentalists really don’t want to examine: even if the Hermes Copper really is endangered, is it worth it to save this species? For the environmentalists, the answer is always “yes”. For everyone else, the answer is a bit harder to come up with. Some simple and obvious facts that environmentalists hate to face are these: that the vast majority of all species that have ever existed are extinct, and that the history of our planet’s life is one of constant change in the mix of species. The environmentalists take it as a given that all species must be preserved. I, and many others, do not — rather, we take the view that a healthy ecology is one in which inferior species are continuously becoming extinct, and new, more robust species are continuously being created. When the main reason a species is threatened is because of mankind’s activities (and not because it’s a loser species), then I support taking a close look at the situation, to see if we can help. But I also support looking at a balance of the benefit to the threatened species versus the cost to us (mankind). And that balance must include the inevitability of that which the environmentalists hate: “development” — because the cost of restraining all development is just too high.

Which brings us around to the Copper Hermes and the denial of the petition to list it as endangered. Despite the environmentalist’s denials (because they know it would be very bad PR), if the Hermes Copper were listed as endangered, the impact on San Diego’s development would be very large — because the Hermes Copper’s habitat is very widespread, and mostly on private, undeveloped land. As we’ve seen in many other locales around the country, environmentalists would be filing lawsuits like mad every time someone tried to do anything to their property, if that property could construed by whatever stretch of the imagination to be Hermes Copper habitat. Worse yet, existing landowners would be prohibited from clearing the chapparal around their homes. Currently the County requires a 100' radius cleared around your home. Many insurance companies are requiring 300' or more cleared (my neighbor just went through this). In all of this brush clearing, you can be quite sure that Hermes Copper habitat is being destroyed — and you can be equally sure that environmentalists would file suit to stop you from clearing that brush, if the Hermes Copper were listed as endangered. If you could not clear the brush, then you’d be unable to get insurance. If you could not get insurance, not only are you at constant risk of losing your assets, but you couldn’t even move out practicably, as the value of your property would be greatly reduced. These results aren’t some imaginations on my part; very similar things have happened all over the U.S. when other species have been listed. The economic impact has been huge — just ask the loggers about spotted owls, if you’d like but one example.

The Bush administration, in denying the petition, cited exactly the issues I discussed above — the high cost to mankind of listing the Hermes Copper. They also cited the questions in the science community about just how badly threatened the Hermes Copper was. They also cited the fact that several closely related species were doing just fine. And they concluded that it just wasn’t worth it to list the Hermes Copper as endangered.

The Center for Biological Diversity calls the decision “…consistent with other administration efforts to undermine wildlife conservation and the Endangered Species Act.” I call it an act of common sense, and I support it.

But of course I have an axe to grind in this dispute. My guess is that my property value would be cut by at least 50% had the Hermes Copper been listed as endangered. And under the bizarre — and I believe, unconstitutional — Endangered Species Act, I would get exactly zero compensation for the government’s stroke of a pen taking my property away…