Endangered Butterflies Are Thriving Behind Bars | Change in Action

On a cool spring morning in Washington state, the work of saving an endangered species unfolds in an unlikely place: a greenhouse just outside the perimeter of a women’s prison. Inside, trays of host plants line long tables. Tiny eggs cling to plantain leaves. Black, yellow-dotted larvae inch forward in slow motion. A small group of women tends to them with the precision of lab technicians and the patience of gardeners.

This is where the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, once common across Pacific Northwest prairies, is being brought back from the brink. Its future depends on people like Margaret Taggart, who found something she did not expect to discover in prison: a sense of purpose. “I’ve always had a love for butterflies, for nature and plants,” she says. “But I didn’t even know butterflies are endangered. The education was eye-opening.”

Kelli Bush, who coordinates the program for the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP), describes captive rearing as a “last resort.” In this case, it’s a response to the fact that Taylor’s checkerspot has lost 97 percent of its native prairie-oak habitat, which has been fragmented by development, agriculture and invasive species. Without large-scale habitat restoration, the butterfly cannot sustain itself in the wild, and without the prison effort, it might already have gone extinct.

What happens inside the program is therefore both rescue and rehabilitation, an effort to restore a butterfly population while also restoring the people who care for it.

Taggart began training as a butterfly technician at the low security Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCV) in January 2025. The process resembled getting a job on the outside: She applied, spoke with a panel and earned her place. Inside prison, identity is often reduced to a number or a record. Here, Taggart was selected for her interest, her aptitude, her willingness to learn. “I got the job,” she recalls, brushing back one of the chest-length dark curls that fall over her gray prison sweater, “and it felt like something real.”

She describes the work with the orange-white pollinators as repetitive, rewarding and strangely tender. Each butterfly is raised individually on its own host plant, usually a plantain, and a nectar plant to prevent disease and preserve genetic diversity. The women track egg clusters so that family lines are not mixed. As the larvae hatch and grow, they pass through developmental stages that require constant attention: feeding, cleaning, monitoring. “I make sure that she’s eating and drinking, that her plant is well maintained,” Taggart says. “I monitor her eggs every single day.” The technicians log growth rates, mortality, environmental conditions, building a dataset that contributes to conservation science.

For Taggart, the process creates an emotional bond. “To be able to nurture something, to take care of a creature that emerges as this beautiful butterfly, that’s just so fulfilling,” the mother of three says. “You watch them from the moment they’re born; it feels like you know them.”

Since its early years, the program has helped raise and release 80,000 caterpillars into restored prairie habitats. But the deeper aim is twofold: to recover a species that can no longer survive without intervention, and to offer incarcerated women a form of education and engagement that is rarely available behind bars.

“When people have access to education, they’re 43 percent less likely to recidivate,” explains Kelli Bush, SPP’s co-director. “And connection to nature improves health and well-being.” Therefore every prison in Washington state boasts an SPP program, ranging from beekeeping to native gardening to raising endangered Northwestern pond turtles or Oregon spotted frogs. The Department of Corrections cooperates with scientists and conservationists to restore both biodiversity and justice.

Bush says the program chooses species the way scientists and partners in conservation should: by need, by feasibility and by respect for the people doing the work. Taylor’s checkerspot was a good fit because it was imperiled and because conservation partners understood the program was an education and training model, not cheap labor. Over time, the incarcerated technicians have helped refine the protocols through trial and error, turning the work into a shared scientific practice.

Every spring, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conservationists bring wild female butterflies, already carrying eggs, into the greenhouses, and the incarcerated women place them on host plants under controlled conditions — around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and 50 percent humidity. When the eggs hatch, the women raise the larvae through multiple growth phases. As the season changes and food plants begin to die back, the caterpillars enter diapause, a form of suspended development similar to hibernation. They spend the winter dormant, often in small containers lined with paper, before reawakening in late winter to resume feeding.

Adult butterflies live only a few weeks, but the larval stage stretches across months, demanding consistency and care. For the technicians, the rhythm of the work becomes a counterpoint to prison life. Taggart describes the greenhouse as a place that feels both scientific and alive: the smell of soil, the presence of plants, the glimpse of trees and birds just beyond the fence line. “I’ve always loved nature,” she says. “Being around it here, it changes things.”

That change is not only emotional. The program includes an educational component in partnership with The Evergreen State College, allowing participants to earn college credits in fields like ecology and animal husbandry. Taggart has already completed coursework in ecology and lab hours in animal husbandry, and is considering pursuing an associate degree after her release in 11 months. Before her three-year prison sentence for selling drugs, she worked in automotive service. Now, she imagines a future connected to environmental work. “The education portion of this program has really stirred me up to want to learn more and to pursue a degree, which is something I haven’t done before,” Taggart says softly. “It gave me a belief in myself that I can learn and grow.”

The work is supported by a broader network: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of Corrections, Evergreen and scientists who join the recovery conversation across the butterflies’ habitat range. The incarcerated technicians participate in the yearly conservation conference at Evergreen and go on excursions to watch the larvae being released in native habitats. In some cases, they present findings, contribute to protocol development, and engage with conservation professionals as peers.

That visibility has ripple effects. Several former participants have gone on to pursue higher education and public-facing careers, carrying their experience into new contexts. For instance, Carolina Landa, one of the first butterfly technicians at Mission Creek in 2011, earned a master’s in public administration and now works as an analyst in the state legislature. For others, the impact is quieter but no less significant: a sense of competence, of being capable of learning and contributing in ways that extend beyond their circumstances. “This program has changed a lot of people’s lives,” Taggart says. “It has impacted me in a way that I couldn’t even imagine.”

The butterfly program itself has evolved over time. It began in 2011 with a less sensitive species, the painted lady, as a trial. By 2012, it expanded to Taylor’s checkerspot, building on earlier captive-breeding efforts by conservation partners like the Oregon Zoo. Since then, it has grown into a model that has drawn interest from across the United States and internationally, with 37 states and multiple countries consulting with SPP on how to replicate its approach. The prison butterfly program is local, but its influence is national, even international.

Yet the work remains fragile. Conservation is not a linear process, and success in one area can create pressure in another. In recent years, the program has had to adjust its scale to match the slow pace of habitat restoration. There is little point in releasing large numbers of butterflies if the ecosystems they depend on are not ready to sustain them.

Operational challenges also persist. The closure of the Mission Creek facility, where the program was originally based, has forced a transition. Taggart and her colleagues are bused to the former site while new infrastructure is developed at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW) Pierce County, where Taggart now lives. At WCCW, four incarcerated women have been tending to a native plant conservation nursery, and together with the eight technicians from Mission Creek, they will form a new conservation team.

What endures, despite these shifts, is the underlying premise: The conditions that allow a butterfly to survive — care, stability, the right environment — are not entirely different from those that support human growth.

For Taggart, that possibility is tangible. “It’s something I can be proud of,” she says. “I see another color in the rainbow.” For a program born in captivity, that may be its most radical act.