Inmates bond with nature and see release and freedom in butterflies

BELFAIR — In a small greenhouse just outside the fence at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, nearly 1,800 rare butterflies await release into what conservationists hope will become their new permanent homes in prairies around Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

However, anticipation might be greater among the small group of inmates that is rearing those butterflies from egg to maturity.

"When I first got sent to Mission Creek, I knew there was a purpose why I was coming here," said Carolina Landa, 29, of Quincy, serving a sentence for drug-related crimes.

Over the past three months, Landa and three other inmates have nurtured a group of the rare Taylor's checkerspot butterflies, listed as a state endangered species and candidate for the federal endangered species list since 2002. Much of the population lives near or on a 7,000-acre range and artillery impact area at Lewis-McChord, although its habitats once spread from lower British Columbia to central Oregon.

The first group of adult butterflies at Mission Creek reached maturity in the past few weeks with 93 percent survival — a rate so high, conservationists from the Oregon Zoo endangered butterfly lab are sending their Taylor's checkerspots to be bred at Mission Creek.

"We spend a lot of time talking about all kind of ecology issues and conservation issues," said Dennis Aubrey, an Evergreen graduate student who guides the inmates through their work during several weekly visits. "It's far from just prairies and butterflies."

Recent experiments have determined another endangered species, the golden paintbrush, to be a suitable host plant for the Taylor's checkerspot. Scientists have long suspected the species to be compatible, but the Mission Creek findings offer hefty incentive to unite two costly conservation projects into one research venture.

Aubrey said the inmates run "about 95 percent of the actual research," adding he plans to credit the inmates as co-authors in any papers he publishes based on the work. Inmates earn the facility's standard wage of 42 cents per hour for 40 hours of work in the greenhouse per week.

"They're not just passive participants in this program," said Kelli Bush, manager for the Sustainable Prisons Project. "We see them as partners, they're treated as partners, and they make contributions as we go along the way."

Inmates have even begun planning ways to stay involved in conservation after they leave Mission Creek. Landa hopes to begin correspondence courses with Evergreen in the fall, and her family will relocate to Olympia after her release in 2014 so she can finish her degree.

"I'm a lot calmer, and I feel like I have a plan and purpose and I know what I want to do with my life," she said. "I'm very excited when I get back out there to do that with my family."

Mission Creek Corrections Program Manager Anne Shoemaker said the program has influenced even those inmates not currently caring for butterflies, a happy side effect of the partnership with Evergreen. The center has hosted various speakers from the school for environmental seminars open to any interested inmate or staff member.

"Even though it's not offered to a large group of offenders, what it also brought to us was education," she said.

In the coming months, Aubrey and the inmates hope to begin releasing caterpillars and adults into six sites around the south Puget Sound area. With plans already in place for the next generation, this is only the start of the transformative project, for both butterflies and inmates.

"This has opened my eyes to a new beginning," Landa said.