Cheeca Lodge Safe Harbor Agreement for the Schaus Swallowtail Butterfly

Posted: 01-Oct-2001; Updated: 02-Jul-2003

In September 2001, Cheeca Lodge, located on Florida's Matecumbe Key, signed a safe harbor agreement to benefit the Schaus swallowtail butterfly  (Papilio (=Heraclides) aristodemus ponceanus). The 27-acre golf resort will team with the University of Florida's McGuire Center for Lepidoptera Research to create habitat for the endangered butterfly. The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation is contributing $55,000 to help fund this work.

The Schaus swallowtail butterfly was listed as a threatened species in 1976
due to the decline of its tropical hardwood hammock habitat, mosquito control practices, and overharvesting by collectors. Once ranging from the south Miami area down to Lower Matecumbe Key, its range has shrunk to the upper Florida Keys, where it is now found from Key Biscayne Park to northern Key Largo and upper Matecumbe Key. Following continued population losses, the butterfly's status was changed to endangered in 1984. Since then, Hurricanes Andrew in 1992 and Georges in 1998 severely damaged Schaus habitat, and butterfly numbers plummeted as low as a few dozen. Subsequent releases of captive-bred Schaus swallowtails boosted the population, and about 350 butterflies are now believed to be in the wild.

Under its safe harbor agreement, Cheeca Lodge will purchase and plant native tropical trees to provide Schaus swallowtail butterflies with places to feed and rest, which should help them reach more distant unoccupied habitat. Two of the tree species to be planted, wild lime (Zanthoxylem fagara) and torchwood (Amyris elemifera) are preferred foods for the species' caterpillars.

A landowner entering into a safe harbor agreement has a "baseline" Endangered Species Act responsibility (i.e., the obligation to protect the number of individuals present on the enrolled property at the time the safe harbor agreement begins). Safe harbor assurances relieve the landowner of further restrictions, should additional endangered individuals (above the baseline number) settle on the safe harbor lands. Currently, no Schaus swallowtails occupy the land enrolled by Cheeca Lodge; thus its baseline is zero.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is encouraging other Florida landowners to enter safe harbor agreements on behalf of the Schaus swallowtail butterfly.

Full text of Cheeca Lodge Schaus swallowtail safe harbor agreement.