Endangered Oregon Butterfly Returns to the Wild With the Help of Women’s Prison Inmates

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Inmates at Coffee Creek Women’s Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon, have been working in collaboration with the Oregon Zoo to bring the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly back from the brink of extinction. The project, supported by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Institute for Applied Ecology, has reared and released nearly 750 Taylor’s checkerspots back into the wild since the beginning of 2019.