Word: forest
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Sacramento mountains checkerspot butterfly is unique, found in all the world only on 2,000 acres of high meadow in the village of Cloudcroft, N.M. (pop. 768, altitude 8,640 ft.), and the adjoining Lincoln National Forest. The 2-in. checkerspot colorfully floods Burro Street, Cloudcroft's main drag, every summer, and it takes its scientific name--Euphydryas anicia cloudcrofti--from the town that shares its habitat...
...catch them while they are still caterpillars. Deep fried and dipped in a little honey mustard sauce, they are delicious," quipped a columnist for the Daily News in nearby Alamogordo, admitting a particular fondness for those from Cloudcroft, which are "sort of spicy." Long-term negotiations to annex national-forest acreage for municipal use would be complicated by Endangered Species Act protection. "People are not happy," says former village trustee Gary Wood. (See the top 10 green ideas...
...they see it, for good reason. The village has been through this ordeal before--twice. In 1993 the Mexican spotted owl, which nests in the Lincoln forest, was declared threatened--a ruling that, combined with a slumping timber market, "killed the logging industry," according to Wood. And in 1999 an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, began petitioning on behalf of the checkerspot, pointing out that it was at risk from development, off-road vehicles and livestock-grazing--or as Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife-program director of WildEarth Guardians, which joined the cause in 2007, puts it, "smelly cows, noisy...
...Cloudcroft, Otero County, the U.S. Forest Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a broad local conservation plan--one of the first in the nation--designed to safeguard the butterfly on both public and private land. But with logging virtually gone, Cloudcroft relies on tourism, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year to hike, camp, fish and hunt. Restrictions on human activity in the checkerspot's habitat would bode ill for a local economy already suffering in the recession. "Anybody who is young and trying to make a living in Cloudcroft works in the tourist...
...Diverse native insects should be cause for celebration," says Rosmarino. "I would like to see Cloudcroft honor and promote its endemic checkerspot, perhaps with a butterfly festival." Cloudcroft is less enthusiastic. "Their agenda," warns Michael Nivison, the village administrator, "is to get everybody out of the forest...