The San Diego Zoo is racing to save these rare butterflies before they vanish
The Laguna Mountains Skipper, one of the rarest butterflies in San Diego County.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pacific Southwest Region)
SAN DIEGO
High up in the mountains of San Diego County, there are meadows with creeks and streams where some of San Diego’s rarest butterflies flutter from flower to flower.
But life isn’t as idyllic for the Laguna Mountains skipper as it may sound. These endangered butterflies have vanished from the very mountain range they were named after and are now found only on Palomar Mountain. Climate change, human activity and wildfires threaten to wipe them out altogether.
SAN DIEGO
Maria Eugenia Chavez Segovia boarded the 40-foot, trawler-like boat with few items: identification, prayer cards, rosary beads and some Mexican pesos.
The 41-year-old from a small town in central Mexico hoped to work in agriculture in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Her aspiration rested on the boat, which she and 31 other migrants with their own ambitions crowded aboard.
But none of them made it to their intended destinations. The boat crashed into a reef off Point Loma on May 2 and splintered.
Chavez Segovia and two others drowned. Another person remains hospitalized, his lungs recovering from resuscitation. The rest are in federal detention as material witnesses to their own attempted smuggling in the unfolding prosecution against the suspected boat captain.