The above picture is of Hesse Park on the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles. Here in 1982 the City of Rancho Palos Verdes deliberately destroyed the colony of the Federally listed Endangered species The Palos Verdes Blue butterfly. This was done to produce this very ordinary small baseball park.

The following year, after this heinous act of destruction the butterfly was pronounced probably extinct. By a miraculous stroke of luck 11 years later a remaining colony, was discovered a short distance away on a US military site where the photographs below were taken.

The deliberate act of destruction perpetrated by the City of Rancho Palos Verdes led to them being prosecuted for breaking the U.S Endangered Species act. The prosecution failed on a technicality but the act has subsequently been amended.

Return to "Rogues" Gallery page.