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State Prisoners Give Monarch Project Wings

Posted by entomology.office | July 12, 2012

July 2, 2012 by Nella Letizia, College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences | WSU News

WALLA WALLA, Wash. – Gilbert London stands in front of a blue plastic food storage barrel converted into a Monarch butterfly rearing cage.

Inside, roughly two dozen opaque-green chrysalises hang from milkweed plants like living jewels. In roughly 10 days, the chrysalises that London helped to raise will yield the iconic adult butterflies with orange-and-black wings. He and five other Washington State Penitentiary offenders will tag the butterflies soon after that, readying them for their release as part of a study by Washington State University entomologist David James. The Monarchs will be free to leave then; London will not. read full article