This week on Radiolab: Of Bombs and Butterflies

In the early 2000s, ecologist Nick Haddad was sitting in his office (back then at North Carolina State University) when the phone rang. On the other end of the line was... The U.S. Army. The Army folks told him, “Look, there’s this endangered butterfly on our base at Fort Bragg, and it’s the only place in the world that it exists. But it’s about to go extinct. And we need your help to save it.” 
 

Nick -- an EEB core faculty member, professor and senior terrestrial ecologist in the department of integrative biology and the W. K. Kellogg Biological Station -- had never even heard of the butterfly. In fact, he barely knew much about butterflies in general.

Nonetheless, he said yes to Uncle Sam. “How hard could it be?” he wondered. Turns out, pretty hard. 

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