Sangha of Auspicious Companions

Endangered Butterflies Are Thriving Behind Bars

In a greenhouse beside a low security women’s prison in Washington state, incarcerated women are raising Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies one by one, tracking egg clusters, monitoring larvae through months of growth, and contributing to the recovery of a species that has lost 97 percent of its habitat. For Margaret Taggart, who is serving a three-year sentence, the meticulous work as a Butterfly Technician has sparked something unexpected: “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,” she says softly. Since 2011, the Sustainability in Prisons Project has helped release 80,000 caterpillars into restored prairies while offering participants college credits and a glimpse of purpose that prison rarely provides. The conditions that allow a butterfly to survive — care, stability, the right environment — turn out to be remarkably similar to those that support human transformation.

Be The Change

Today, tend to something small with the patience you’d give a creature that cannot speak: a houseplant, a garden seedling, even a patch of weeds pushing through pavement. As you do, notice what it asks of you: attention, consistency, the willingness to see growth that happens too slowly to measure in a single glance.