Latest news with #MissionCreek
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Yahoo
These women are raising endangered butterfly larvae from prison: ‘They reconnect with their own brilliance'
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae. Of the many things the team here has tried to tempt larvae of the Taylor's checkerspot – a native of the Pacific north-west – with, it is the invasive English plantain they seem to love the most. 'The big thing for me is being part of an effort to save an endangered species,' says Egli, 36. 'It is a big thrill.' Egli is one of seven women incarcerated at the Mission Creek correctional facility, located a two-hour drive from Seattle, who are part of a year-long program that takes captured butterflies, harvests their eggs, and oversees the growth of the larvae before they are released into the wild where they will turn into adults. Last year, scientists working with the team released more than 10,000 larvae. The adult butterflies live for just a handful of fabulous, wing-fluttering days. The women working in the program are dressed in red sweaters – indicating they are outside the prison's perimeter – rather than the usual prison garb of khaki pants and white shirts. Many of the women speak of their pride working on a project that feels like it is making a positive contribution to the world. Lynn Cheroff, 42, said she had been thrilled to talk about it with her two young children when they come to visit. When she telephones her mother about the work, her mother tells her she is proud. Another woman, Jennifer Teitzel, appreciates the sense of order and discipline the program demands and instills. Every detail about the eggs and larvae has to be collated and recorded. It is the women's responsibility, and nobody else's, seven days a week. At the same time, while the program run by Washington state department of corrections (DOC), is part of an effort to prepare the women for life once their sentences are over and to smooth the path to work or college, there is no sugar-coating their predicament. Egli, who has three young children, is serving a nine-year sentence for a 2020 drunken hit and run that left a woman with permanent brain damage. 'I am paying the price for that every day. I can never go back and undo what happened,' she says. 'But I can try to make sure the rest of my life is about making the world a better place.' The program at Mission Creek has been operating for 10 years. Kelli Bush, the co-director of Sustainability in Prisons Project, a partnership between the DOC and the Evergreen State College in Olympia, says a crucial component are graduate students who visit to offer educational support. Bush says in addition to providing the women something to feel proud about as many deal with shame and guilt, the program also gives them confidence about their own capabilities. 'They reconnect with their own brilliance, they reconnect with their own intelligence,' she says. 'It's routine to hear people say 'I didn't think I was smart and I'm realising I'm doing science'. [With] hands-on learning and incorporating the academic components, pretty soon people find themselves reading peer-reviewed scientific journals and saying. 'I can do this too.'' The Taylor's butterfly's preferred habitat is open grasslands and prairie. For thousands of years, such landscapes were created and maintained by active burning by Indigenous communities. Without such native stewardship, and with ever-increasing threats from developers and town planners, the amount of grassland has drastically diminished. Today in the Pacific north-west, the butterfly is restricted to eight healthy populations in Washington state, two in Oregon and one in Canada's British Columbia. A favored place is Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), operated by the US army and situated 10 miles from Tacoma. Training with heavy artillery has long kept the prairie free of unwanted vegetation. Yet when the Taylor's was added to the US Endangered Species Act list in 2013, it presented military officials with a challenge; how could they continue to make use of the base without harming a species now protected by federal law? Dan Calvert, of the Sentinel Landscape Partnership, a coalition of federal and state groups that works with landowners to promote sustainable land use around military installations, says JBLM contains '90% of the prairie habitat in western Washington'. He estimates the classification of the Taylor's checkerspot and other species means the military 'cannot use half the base for about half the year'. One of the efforts to boost the numbers of Taylor's checkerspot in locations off-base – and thereby allow the military to work unimpeded at the base – led to funding for the Mission Creek project by the Department of Defense (DoD). 'It's this whole, big process with the DoD funding efforts to support the military mission of JBLM by creating off-base habitat to mitigate your on-base impact,' says Calvert. The collaboration has helped boost the Taylor's checkerspot. This year could be a record year for releases of adults. In 2024, the program released about 10,900 larvae. However, there's a dark cloud looming over the program. Mission Creek is set to close in October because of budget cuts. There is a plan to transfer the women and the program to a prison at Gig Harbor, located 25 miles away, but there is some concern among current participants it could simply be cut entirely. Egli, who is set to become eligible for a work-release program under which she would serve the last 18 months of her sentence working outside the jail and returning to do what's known as a DOC re-entry facility every night, says the program changed the person she was. She has been sober for four years, and says she is focused on the future and earning enough money to buy a home. 'At some point, I'd like to go back to college,' she says. 'But I know I have to work hard and get some money before I can do that.' This story was amended on 22 July 2025. An earlier version reported that more than 67,000 larvae were released last year; in fact, this should have said more than 10,000. Also, the military cannot use half of Joint Base Lewis–McChord for parts of the year because of the classification of a range of species, not just Taylor's checkerspot.
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- The Guardian
These women are raising endangered butterfly larvae from prison: ‘They reconnect with their own brilliance'
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae. Of the many things the team here has tried to tempt larvae of the Taylor's checkerspot – a native of the Pacific north-west – with, it is the invasive English plantain they seem to love the most. 'The big thing for me is being part of an effort to save an endangered species,' says Egli, 36. 'It is a big thrill.' Egli is one of seven women incarcerated at the Mission Creek correctional facility, located a two-hour drive from Seattle, who are part of a year-long program that takes captured butterflies, harvests their eggs, and oversees the growth of the larvae before they are released into the wild where they will turn into adults. Last year, scientists working with the team released more than 67,000 larvae. The adult butterflies live for just a handful of fabulous, wing-fluttering days. The women working in the program are dressed in red sweaters – indicating they are outside the prison's perimeter – rather than the usual prison garb of khaki pants and white shirts. Many of the women speak of their pride working on a project that feels like it is making a positive contribution to the world. Lynn Cheroff, 42, said she had been thrilled to talk about it with her two young children when they come to visit. When she telephones her mother about the work, her mother tells her she is proud. Another woman, Jennifer Teitzel, appreciates the sense of order and discipline the program demands and instills. Every detail about the eggs and larvae has to be collated and recorded. It is the women's responsibility, and nobody else's, seven days a week. At the same time, while the program run by Washington state department of corrections (DOC), is part of an effort to prepare the women for life once their sentences are over and to smooth the path to work or college, there is no sugar-coating their predicament. Egli, who has three young children, is serving a nine-year sentence for a 2020 drunken hit and run that left a woman with permanent brain damage. 'I am paying the price for that every day. I can never go back and undo what happened,' she says. 'But I can try to make sure the rest of life is about making the world a better place.' The program at Mission Creek has been operating for 10 years. Kelli Bush, the co-director of Sustainability in Prisons Project, a partnership between the DOC and Evergreen State College in Olympia, says a crucial component are graduate students who visit to offer educational support. Bush says in addition to providing the women something to feel proud about as many deal with shame and guilt, the program also gives them confidence about their own capabilities. 'They reconnect with their own brilliance, they reconnect with their own intelligence,' she says. 'It's routine to hear people say 'I didn't think I was smart and I'm realising I'm doing science'. [With] hands-on learning and incorporating the academic components, pretty soon people find themselves reading peer-reviewed scientific journals and saying. 'I can do this too.'' The Taylor's butterfly's preferred habitat is open grasslands and prairie. For thousands of years, such landscapes were created and maintained by active burning by Indigenous communities. Without such native stewardship, and with ever-increasing threats from developers and town planners, the amount of grassland has drastically diminished. Today in the Pacific north-west, the butterfly is restricted to eight healthy populations in Washington state, two in Oregon and one in Canada's British Columbia. A favored place is Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), operated by the US army and situated 10 miles from Tacoma. Training with heavy artillery has long kept the prairie free of unwanted vegetation. Yet when the Taylor's was added to the US Endangered Species Act list in 2013, it presented military officials with a challenge; how could they continue to make use of the base without harming a species now protected by federal law? Dan Calvert, of the Sentinel Landscape Partnership, a coalition of federal and state groups that works with landowners to promote sustainable land use around military installations, says JBLM contains '90% of the prairie habitat in western Washington'. He estimates the classification of the Taylor's checkerspot means the military 'cannot use half the base for about half the year'. One of the efforts to boost the numbers of Taylor's checkerspot in locations off-base – and thereby allow the military work unimpeded at the base – led to funding for the Mission Creek project by the Department of Defense (DoD). 'It's this whole, big process with the DoD funding efforts to support the military mission of JBLM by creating off-base habitat to mitigate your on-base impact,' says Calvert. The collaboration has helped boost the Taylor's checkerspot. This year could be a record year for releases of adults. In 2024, the program released 67,100 larvae. However, there's a dark cloud looming over the program. Mission Creek is set to close in October because of budget cuts. There is a plan to transfer the women and the program to a jail at Gig Harbor, located 25 miles away, but there is some concern among current participants it could simply be cut entirely. Egli, who is set to become eligible for a work-release program under which she would serve the last 18 months of her sentence working outside the jail and returning to do what's known as a DOC re-entry facility every night, says the program changed the person she was. She has been sober for four years, and says she is focused on the future and earning enough money to buy a home. 'At some point, I'd like to go back to college,' she says. 'But I know I have to work hard and get some money before I can do that.'
The Guardian
04-07-2025
- The Guardian
These women are raising endangered butterfly larvae from prison: ‘They reconnect with their own brilliance'
Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae. Of the many things the team here has tried to tempt larvae of the Taylor's checkerspot – a native of the Pacific north-west – with, it is the invasive English plantain they seem to love the most. 'The big thing for me is being part of an effort to save an endangered species,' says Egli, 36. 'It is a big thrill.' Egli is one of seven women incarcerated at the Mission Creek correctional facility, located a two-hour drive from Seattle, who are part of a year-long program that takes captured butterflies, harvests their eggs, and oversees the growth of the larvae before they are released into the wild where they will turn into adults. Last year, scientists working with the team released more than 67,000 larvae. The adult butterflies live for just a handful of fabulous, wing-fluttering days. The women working in the program are dressed in red sweaters – indicating they are outside the prison's perimeter – rather than the usual prison garb of khaki pants and white shirts. Many of the women speak of their pride working on a project that feels like it is making a positive contribution to the world. Lynn Cheroff, 42, said she had been thrilled to talk about it with her two young children when they come to visit. When she telephones her mother about the work, her mother tells her she is proud. Another woman, Jennifer Teitzel, appreciates the sense of order and discipline the program demands and instills. Every detail about the eggs and larvae has to be collated and recorded. It is the women's responsibility, and nobody else's, seven days a week. At the same time, while the program run by Washington state department of corrections (DOC), is part of an effort to prepare the women for life once their sentences are over and to smooth the path to work or college, there is no sugar-coating their predicament. Egli, who has three young children, is serving a nine-year sentence for a 2020 drunken hit and run that left a woman with permanent brain damage. 'I am paying the price for that every day. I can never go back and undo what happened,' she says. 'But I can try to make sure the rest of life is about making the world a better place.' The program at Mission Creek has been operating for 10 years. Kelli Bush, the co-director of Sustainability in Prisons Project, a partnership between the DOC and Evergreen State College in Olympia, says a crucial component are graduate students who visit to offer educational support. Bush says in addition to providing the women something to feel proud about as many deal with shame and guilt, the program also gives them confidence about their own capabilities. 'They reconnect with their own brilliance, they reconnect with their own intelligence,' she says. 'It's routine to hear people say 'I didn't think I was smart and I'm realising I'm doing science'. [With] hands-on learning and incorporating the academic components, pretty soon people find themselves reading peer-reviewed scientific journals and saying. 'I can do this too.'' The Taylor's butterfly's preferred habitat is open grasslands and prairie. For thousands of years, such landscapes were created and maintained by active burning by Indigenous communities. Without such native stewardship, and with ever-increasing threats from developers and town planners, the amount of grassland has drastically diminished. Today in the Pacific north-west, the butterfly is restricted to eight healthy populations in Washington state, two in Oregon and one in Canada's British Columbia. A favored place is Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), operated by the US army and situated 10 miles from Tacoma. Training with heavy artillery has long kept the prairie free of unwanted vegetation. Yet when the Taylor's was added to the US Endangered Species Act list in 2013, it presented military officials with a challenge; how could they continue to make use of the base without harming a species now protected by federal law? Dan Calvert, of the Sentinel Landscape Partnership, a coalition of federal and state groups that works with landowners to promote sustainable land use around military installations, says JBLM contains '90% of the prairie habitat in western Washington'. He estimates the classification of the Taylor's checkerspot means the military 'cannot use half the base for about half the year'. One of the efforts to boost the numbers of Taylor's checkerspot in locations off-base – and thereby allow the military work unimpeded at the base – led to funding for the Mission Creek project by the Department of Defense (DoD). 'It's this whole, big process with the DoD funding efforts to support the military mission of JBLM by creating off-base habitat to mitigate your on-base impact,' says Calvert. The collaboration has helped boost the Taylor's checkerspot. This year could be a record year for releases of adults. In 2024, the program released 67,100 larvae. However, there's a dark cloud looming over the program. Mission Creek is set to close in October because of budget cuts. There is a plan to transfer the women and the program to a jail at Gig Harbor, located 25 miles away, but there is some concern among current participants it could simply be cut entirely. Egli, who is set to become eligible for a work-release program under which she would serve the last 18 months of her sentence working outside the jail and returning to do what's known as a DOC re-entry facility every night, says the program changed the person she was. She has been sober for four years, and says she is focused on the future and earning enough money to buy a home. 'At some point, I'd like to go back to college,' she says. 'But I know I have to work hard and get some money before I can do that.'
CTV News
30-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
No one jumped or fell into Kelowna creek, RCMP confirm after search called off
Members of Central Okanagan Search and Rescue search the Mission Creek on May 28, 2025. (Credit: Facebook/CentralOkanaganSAR) Mounties in Kelowna have concluded that no one jumped or fell into Mission Creek on Wednesday night, after a report from the public sparked a search and rescue effort that evening. Central Okanagan Search and Rescue deployed to the mouth of the swollen creek around 5 p.m. after witnesses reported that 'a young, fit female wearing a dark blue shirt and dark shorts' may have jumped into the water. The report was considered 'unconfirmed,' COSAR said in a social media post announcing that it had called off the search until more information was received. Read more: Search and rescue crews appeal for information in Kelowna creek incident 'It has been determined that two athletic youth were enjoying a competitive run down the mission creek greenway at the time of a reported female jumping into the creek,' Kelowna RCMP said in an update on the case Friday. 'However, the father of the two youths called police to report his daughters, who match the initial description, jumped off a bridge in the same reported area, down onto the trail to continue their run and are home safe.' Police thanked the witnesses who made the initial report, as well as COSAR for its efforts searching the creek. 'Police took this matter very seriously with several resources in the search including foot patrols, police boats, a drone and the RCMP helicopter flying both in the day and at night,' Mounties said. 'The RCMP would like to remind the public to be diligent when using the outdoors, particularly around the waterways. With the spring runoff continuing, water levels are very high and the currents are strong, making creeks and rivers very dangerous at this time of the year.'
CTV News
29-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Report of woman jumping into Kelowna creek triggers search and rescue operation
Members of Central Okanagan Search and Rescue search the Mission Creek on May 28, 2025. (Credit: Facebook/CentralOkanaganSAR) A report of a young woman jumping into a swollen Kelowna creek Wednesday prompted a significant search and rescue effort that has since been stood down, according to crews, who are appealing for more information about the incident. Central Okanagan Search and Rescue, along with Kelowna RCMP and the local fire department deployed to the mouth of Mission Creek around 5 p.m. in response to a 911 call. 'A young, fit female wearing a dark blue shirt and dark shorts was seen near the Casorso and Swamp Road bridge. Witnesses reported that she may have jumped into the creek, though this remains unconfirmed,' a social media post from COSAR said. Ground and air searches were called off Wednesday night after a significant effort failed to locate anyone in the creek, which was 'fast-moving' and 'swollen with spring runoff,' according to COSAR. The search was suspended Thursday. 'We're either waiting for this person to come forward or for someone to report her missing,' said COSAR Manager Duane Tresnich, in a social media update. 'At this point, we need more concrete evidence before we resume operations.' Anyone with information is urged to call Kelowna RCMP at 250-762-3300.
