How Gun Sales Are Helping To Conserve Butterflies

The Karner blue butterfly is a tiny thing, with colorful wings that extend just an inch across and a life that rarely wanders more than 600 feet from where it began. Its caterpillars can only eat wild lupines — a flower that’s become less abundant in the wild because of development and habitat fragmentation. As a result, the Karner was named an endangered species in 1992. But Karner blues are getting help from an unlikely source: gun sales.

The Nature Conservancy has a project in the works near Saratoga, New York, that will preserve an area that’s already home to these lupines and butterflies, and much of the program’s funding comes from the sales of guns and ammunition. For that, Karner conservationists can thank the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act.

A surge in gun and ammunition sales since 2008 has created a rush of new money for projects like the one in New York to protect the Karner blue butterfly. “We’ve literally more than doubled the Pittman-Robertson fund from 2008 to 2013 and that influx has had a huge positive impact on state wildlife agencies,” Curcuruto said.