Alabama is hiding what might be the largest population of Mitchell's
satyr butterflies in the world. But scientists only learned of their
existence in the Yellowhammer State by accident.
Mitchell's satyr butterflies are both rare and endangered, and before
2000 they were only known to be living in a handful of wetland areas in
Michigan and North Carolina.
But that all changed when Dr. Jane Vicroy Scott and her husband Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association,
visited Marion in 2000. They were in town so Scott could give the
commencement address at Judson College, and decided, pretty much on a
whim, to stop in the Talladega National Forest to look for butterflies.
It was Scott who spotted an unusual looking butterfly
and called out to Glassberg. It was small and brown, and its wings were
dotted with rows of round, yellow-ringed eyespots. She told him that
she thought it was a Mitchell's satyr, but her husband was incredulous.
"But I look at it and take a photo and it is, in fact, Mitchell’s satyr, which is pretty amazing,” Glassberg recalled to AL.com.
In the years that followed, colonies of the elusive butterfly have
been spotted in other areas throughout the Talladega National Forest and
in parts of northeast Mississippi.
Mitchell's satyr butterflies inhabit beaver-impacted wetlands and prefer to live in the damp recesses of densely wooded swamps—places, Glassberg told Southern Living, where people don’t usually go looking for butterflies.
They’d been there all along, he explained, we just had no idea.