Scientists plan to bring the frosted elfin back to Port Rowan next spring

Scientists are preparing to return the frosted elfin to the Lake Erie shore at Port Rowan, where it was last seen in Ontario in 1988. CBC News, citing The Canadian Press, reported the plan on October 31, 2026. Several surveys, including one in 2019, found none in nearly 40 years, according to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

Ryan Norris, who teaches integrative biology at the University of Guelph, said the team plans to import butterflies and eggs from New York, breed them at the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory, and release them next spring. Old tobacco fields around there have been restored as oak savanna. Norris said breeding cannot start until there are enough wild sundial lupins, the caterpillar's host plant. He tied the disappearance to habitat lost to towns and farms.

The work is part of a wider effort, with universities and agencies, on three butterflies: the frosted elfin, the mottled duskywing, and the curiously isolated hairstreak. The University of Guelph said coordinating them would be Canada's first multi-species framework for insect conservation, and that Ottawa has provided $2.4 million. The mottled duskywing is the part already in the field. It was reintroduced at Pinery Provincial Park in Grand Bend and at other Norfolk County sites five years ago. Norris said the Pinery population is several hundred, a second site is close to 100, and butterflies are spilling into campsites the team is not even monitoring. The hairstreak still has a single known population, in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta. The frosted elfin release is scheduled for next spring. It has not happened.