On a cool spring morning in Washington state, the work of saving an endangered species unfolds in an unlikely place: a greenhouse just outside the perimeter of a women’s prison. Inside, trays of host plants line long tables. Tiny eggs cling to plantain leaves. Black, yellow-dotted larvae inch forward in slow motion. A small group of incarcerated women tends to them with the precision of lab technicians and the patience of gardeners.

This is where the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly, once common across Pacific Northwest prairies, is being brought back from the brink. Its future depends on people like Margaret Taggart, who found something she did not expect to discover in prison: a sense of purpose. “I’ve always had a love for butterflies, for nature and plants,” she says. “But I didn’t even know butterflies are endangered. The education was eye-opening.”

Kelli Bush, who coordinates the program for the Sustainability in Prisons Project (SPP) connecting incarcerated women to conservation science, describes captive rearing as a “last resort.” In this case, it’s a response to the fact that Taylor’s checkerspot has lost 97 percent of its native prairie-oak habitat, which has been fragmented by development, agriculture and invasive species. Without large-scale habitat restoration, the butterfly cannot sustain itself in the wild, and without the prison effort, it might already have gone extinct.

What happens inside the program is therefore both rescue and rehabilitation, an effort to restore a butterfly population while also restoring the people who care for it.

Taggart began training as a butterfly technician at the low security Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCV) in January 2025. The process resembled getting a job on the outside: She applied, spoke with a panel and earned her place. Inside prison, identity is often reduced to a number or a record. Here, Taggart was selected for her interest, her aptitude, her willingness to learn from the group of incarcerated women. “I got the job,” she recalls, brushing back one of the chest-length dark curls that fall over her gray prison sweater, “and it felt like something real.”

Read the full article about the Sustainability in Prisons Project by Michaela Haas at Reasons to Be Cheerful.