The Butterfly Effect: Investigating the Impact of Tourism on an Endangered Butterfly in the White Mountains of New Hampshire

Abstract

The alpine zone of the White Mountains of New Hampshire is home to a number of endangered species including the White Mountain Fritillary, a small glacial relic butterfly. Enduring some of the world’s worst weather conditions in an isolated, shrinking habitat, the White Mountain Fritillary has historically been an understudied species, though often admired by hikers as they traverse the numerous trails crisscrossing the alpine zone of the Presidential Range. The tourism industry of New Hampshire centers much of its activity in this area, leading to questions concerning the impact tourism could have on this fragile habitat and the variety of species which reside there. The trails that go through the natural habitat of the White Mountain Fritillary, including heath-shrub-rush meadows and snowbank communities, make the possible impact of hikers very significant, as habitat loss and anthropogenic disruption could damage the White Mountain Fritillary’s dwindling 7-mile range. After a field season spent hiking around the alpine zone and conducting point count surveys, I constructed a generalized linear mixed model that predicts White Mountain Fritillary sightings based upon a number of explanatory variables including the number of available flowering nectar heads, distance to nearby trails, temperature, and wind speed. Nectar counts appeared to be the only significant predictor of White Mountain Fritillary sightings, and there was a non-significant correlation between nectar counts and distance to trail, demonstrating that trails are not noticeably impacting the abundance of surrounding nectar resources. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the impact of tourism on this butterfly using sightings as a metric, and I hope to add to the limited research basis on the White Mountain Fritillary.