appeared in the flatwoods this July—one of 16 threatened species logged this month. This metallic blue-and-red beauty had vanished from nearly all of Florida by the 1960s, a casualty of harvest pressure on its sole larval host, coontie, which was stripped from the landscape for arrowroot starch production.
Each sighting now maps a small victory: proof that coontie has returned to a place where it was nearly erased. The butterfly's presence tells us the food web it depends on is mending. It is a rare, measurable sign that ecological loss can be reversed—if even partially—when the plants that anchor a species' survival are given room to grow again.
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are now recorded in the same coastal scrub and hammock edges where tortoises forage and nest — invasive plants that shade out the low, open groundcover this species depends on. Florida has lost
an estimated 80 percent of its gopher tortoise population
over the last century, mostly to development and habitat fragmentation. The coastal scrub patches still holding tortoises along this ridge are among the last refugia in a heavily urbanized landscape.
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