HEALTH CARE

Sue Abderholden

NAMI Minnesota (National Alliance on Mental Illness) announced that Sue Abderholden will retire as executive director effective Oct. 15. Abderholden has led NAMI Minnesota since October 2001.

AIRPORTS

The Metropolitan Airports Commission announced it has promoted Kelly Gerads to director of reliever airports, responsible for the operation and maintenance of its six general aviation airports in the Twin Cities metro area: St. Paul Downtown Airport, Flying Cloud Airport, Anoka County-Blaine Airport, Crystal Airport, Airlake Airport and Lake Elmo Airport. Gerads was promoted from assistant director of reliever airports, a position she’s held since 2007. The MAC also operates Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

ATTRACTIONS

Transwestern Real Estate Services announced the planned opening of a Soar N Bounce Trampoline and Adventure Park at Aurora Village Shopping Center, located at 1801 County Road 42 West in Burnsville; it’s the chain’s first Minnesota location.

CONSTRUCTION

Empirehouse, a Mounds View architectural glass and metal contractor, announced the retirement of General Manager James Bringle.

EDUCATION

Blaze Credit Union, Falcon Heights, announced it was honored with the Minnesota Credit Union Network’s 2025 Desjardins Youth Financial Education Award, recognizing Blaze’s initiatives promoting financial wellbeing of students in St. Paul Public Schools.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

U.S. Bank, Minneapolis, announced that it has united its Global Fund Services and Global Corporate Trust teams into a single Investment Services division led by Jay Martin, president of Investment Services. Martin has led Global Fund Services since joining the bank in 2023. Prior to joining U.S. Bank, he spent time at Citco, where he was head of operations within the Fund Services division. … Merchants Financial Group, Winona, announced the reelection of three directors to three-year terms: Molly Jungbauer, Hollstadt Consulting; John Killen, WinCraft; and James Rogers III, Mayo Clinic.

HEALTH CARE

Nura Pain Clinics, a subsidiary of the Capitol Pain Institute family of practices, announced the opening of a clinic at 707 Bielenberg Drive, Suite 108, Woodbury. Dr. Larry Studt, who joined Nura in 2024, will serve as the Woodbury clinic’s primary provider. Nura Pain Clinics also has locations in Edina and Coon Rapids.

HONORS

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced it has named ATEK Distribution, of Minneapolis, as SBA’s Minnesota Veteran-Owned Small Business of the Year. The business is owned by Jeffrey Anderson, who previously served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. ATEK Distribution provides wholesale electrical construction materials, including wiring supplies, electrical light fixtures, EV charging stations, light bulbs, and solar and electrical power equipment. … Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota announced this year’s winners of BBB’s Torch Awards for Ethics: Category 1 (1-2 employees): T & J Construction, Rogers; Category 2 (3-15 employees): Front Burner Accounting Services, Eden Prairie; Category 3 (20-99 employees): Paris Painting, Brooklyn Center; Category 4 (100+ employees): Coordinated Business Systems, Burnsville.

LAW

Faegre Drinker announced that Berglind Halldorsdottir Birkland has joined the firm’s litigation practice as counsel in the Minneapolis office. Birkland, a native of Iceland, also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota Law School and chairs the International Business Law Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association.

REAL ESTATE

HomeServices of America, a Minneapolis-based Berkshire Hathaway franchised real estate agency, announced the following executive appointments: Alex Seavall, promoted from chief financial officer to chief financial and operations officer; and Candace Adams has been named executive vice president. Adams has served as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England Properties.

SERVICES

Restaurant Technologies, a Mendota Heights-based provider of cooking oil waste management to restaurants, announced it has named Matthew Micowski as chief financial officer, succeeding Bob Weil, who has held the position since 2007 and has transitioned to a strategic adviser position within the organization.

TECHNOLOGY

Calabrio, a Minneapolis-based provider of human resources software and services, announced it has appointed Frank Ciccone as chief revenue officer. Ciccone most recently was with Verizon, where he managed a $400 million collaboration and customer experience business.

Related Articles

Business People: Education Minnesota elects Monica Byron as president

UnitedHealth CEO Witty resigns amid setbacks

Business People: HomeServices of America announces leadership change

Business People: Pakou Hang takes program post at Northwest Area Foundation

Warren Buffett shocks shareholders by announcing his intention to retire at the end of the year

EMAIL ITEMS to businessnews@pioneerpress.com.

Edward Lotterman

Today, the health of the U.S. economy hangs on trade policies, ones not decided by Congress as the U.S. Constitution requires, but rather on the spastic impulses of the ill-informed inhabitant of the Oval Office. In this dire circumstance, ignorance of history tragically plagues public discourse on key issues. Many argue that a globalist ideology brought us to the current state of imports and trade balances. They also assert that this ideology is responsible for the destruction of manufacturing in our country. Both beliefs are not true. Both assertions twist facts.

Start with U.S. manufacturing. It has not, as some argue, “disappeared.” The U.S. remains the second-largest manufacturer in the world, turning out 16 percent of total output. Yes, that is half of China’s 32%, but more than twice Japan’s 6.5% and three times Germany’s 4.8%.

Manufacturing has declined in relative importance. A century ago, it made up a third of national output. By 1994, that had dropped to 18%, and it is only 10% now. But similar declines in relative importance are true for agriculture, forestry, fisheries and mining.

Our manufacturing sector continues to grow, even if slowly. Inflation-adjusted manufacturing output is up 8% over the last 30 years. That is less than total GDP growth of 75%, but above much of Europe. The sector has not been dynamic, but neither has it disappeared.

Nor have all manufacturing jobs disappeared. These peaked at 19.5 million in 1979, late in the Carter administration, and are at 12.8 million now. The first large drop was due to the strong dollar in the first half of the Reagan administration. That hammered steel, autos and farming, three sectors that depended on exporting or that competed with imports.

The sharp drop came in the new millennium. Some 17.3 million people still worked in factories in mid-2000, but that fell to 11.4 million by the end of the decade. This was the recession following the Wall Street meltdown of 2007-2009. Numbers did recover to 12.9 million by early 2023 and are near that now.

The second historical distortion involves changes in U.S. trade policies. Some argue that ideologies vaunting globalization mesmerized U.S. leaders in closing decades of the 20th century, driving changes in long-established trade regimes for ideological reasons.

That is nonsense. All the major actions were driven by pragmatic foreign policy considerations. There was little consideration of economic effects because they were minimal in the futures foreseeable at the time. No one was clairvoyant about the following decades.

For example, former President Jimmy Carter now is lambasted for extending “most-favored nation” status to China in 1979. Why didn’t he see this would destroy U.S. jobs?

The reality was that Carter just continued foreign policies initiated by his predecessor Richard Nixon to split China away from the Soviet Union. Nixon’s dramatic 1972 trip to China had upset the relative balance of power between free nations and the communist bloc that had prevailed for 20 years.

Keeping China apart from the USSR demanded that China grow economically and open to the rest of the world. With China’s GDP at 1 percent of what it is now, no one worried about U.S. jobs. Japan was the huge threat, China a negligible afterthought.

Similarly, the two-step construction of NAFTA resulted from Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush responding to requests from ideologically-compatible politicians in friendly nations, not from grand philosophies.

In Canada, conservative Brian Mulroney’s becoming prime minister in 1984 broke 18 years of liberal government. Mulroney was far more friendly to the U.S. and wanted a trade agreement to help him in the next elections. It also would tie the hands of future liberal governments. Many future domestic policy changes would require renegotiation of an international treaty.

With the Canadian and U.S. auto industries already in free trade since the 1950s, Mulroney and Reagan got along well. Neither saw any political downside. In 1988, our House of Representatives ratified the agreement 366-40 and the Senate followed 83-9.

That pattern repeated three years later. Mexican President Carlos Salinas approached Bush for a treaty. Again the head of a neighboring country who was the most pro-U.S. official in years asked a favor from a fellow conservative. Also, the desire to tie the hands of successors with opposing views again played in. NAFTA was negotiated with Bush, who signed the treaty for our country as a lame duck on Dec. 17, 1992.

Contrary to what many believe, President Bill Clinton’s only role was to submit Bush 41’s treaty to Congress. More controversial than the treaty with Canada, it still passed the House with 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting aye. The Senate vote passed with votes from 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats. Thus, there was more opposition among Democrats, but still substantial support.

All this took place against the backdrop of a tortuous revamping of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade into a stronger World Trade Organization.

The GATT had its roots in the 1944 Bretton Woods conference designing post-World War II international economic structures that would not repeat the fatal errors made in the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. The conference created the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. However, isolationists in the U.S. Congress torpedoed an International Trade Organization.

All GATT could do was organize periodic conferences where reducing trade barriers and resolving conflicts might take place. It had no enforcement powers. And the U.S. had insisted from the start on excluding agriculture from any GATT purview.

Negotiations started in 1986 when the GOP Reagan administration wanted to reverse 40 years of U.S. policy with a new organization with the power to resolve trade disputes. It sought to force the European Union and Japan to lower their barriers to ag imports from the U.S. and to reduce their subsidies to their own farmers. This did represent a globalist philosophy to a degree, but it also gave the U.S. a pragmatic edge over the status quo. The transition to the WTO finally happened in 1994.

Through all this, China had been a negligible factor. Japan was the threat. Congress had surrendered some of its constitutional authority over tariffs to the president as a tactic by Democrats to force Republican presidents to challenge Japan, the real peril. The quintessential photo of the 1996 presidential campaign showed Clinton reclining in an airplane seat with journalist James Fallows’ book “Looking Into the Sun” across his lap. It described economic growth in East Asia, but meant Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

In 1999, after 13 years of negotiations under three presidents, the Clinton administration acceded to admission of China to the WTO. Congress approved it 237-97 in the House and 93-15 in the Senate. The debate generally recognized it affirmed a policy begun by a Republican president 27 years earlier. And China’s economy was only 6% the size of ours.

Yes, “globalism” was alive in the 1990s, but U.S. policy moves were largely pragmatic and defensive. Yes, individual pundits and politicians did champion a global economy without barriers. But practical considerations drove decisions. As we now tear down much of what we ourselves created from 1944 to 2000, we need to keep that reality in mind.

St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.

A few days before Memorial Day, Joanne Malmstedt sat at a folding table in a parking lot at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, surrounded by trucks and supplies and volunteers, studying several maps in front of her like the leader of a military campaign.

In a way, she is the leader of a military campaign — or, one that honors veterans with military-like precision.

It was on Thursday that Malmstedt, the founder and president of Flags for Fort Snelling, was mapping out the waves of volunteers who come to the national cemetery every May to place U.S. flags on every grave for Memorial Day. This year, those volunteers will total approximately 3,700 to 4,700 people, all working to place (and, later, to remove) more than 190,000 flags at the graves over the span of several days.

For Malmstedt, the campaign — now in its 10th year — goes beyond a personal gesture of remembrance for the veterans in her own family, her father and her great grandfather, who are buried here.

“These men and women sacrificed so much,” says Malmstedt, 44, of Blaine. “I really want to make sure that sacrifice is not forgotten.”

While the nonprofit honors all who served our country — expanding the day of remembrance beyond those who died while serving — the origin of what we now call Memorial Day was meant to honor those who died in the Civil War.

Memorial Day

Flags for Fort Snelling founder and president Joanne Malmstedt at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on Saturday, May 24, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Fort Snelling National Cemetery, located near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport International Airport on 34th Avenue, is the only national cemetery in Minnesota, a place to honor veterans (and their eligible family members) under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration. Minnesota’s national cemetery was formally dedicated almost 86 years ago, on July 14, 1939, according to the cemetery’s website.

Days before that dedication, on July 5, the first veteran was laid to rest there: His name is George H. Mallon, a Medal of Honor recipient who served as a captain in the U.S. Army during World War I. After his courage leading his men in battle in France in 1918, he was included in an American general’s list of 100 heroes of World War I. He returned home later, where he was active in Minnesota politics. He died at age 57.

Mallon’s grave is located near a large plaque displaying the Memorial Day Order of 1868, situated in a prominent spot near the cemetery’s main entrance.

In Order No. 11, John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic — a veterans’ organization — declared that a day in May should be dedicated to “decorating” the graves of the Civil War fallen.

Related Articles

‘100 deadliest days’ on roads kick off Memorial Day weekend

Alternatives to defunding: Who goes to help when police aren’t needed?

‘Defund the Police,’ five years later: What did the movement accomplish?

Apple Valley park’s $16M renovation to feature inclusive playground, new pool

Memorial Day events in the Twin Cities metro area this weekend

This day, the order commanded, should be “designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion and whose bodies now lie in every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit …

” … Let us, then, at the time appointed, gather around their sacred remains and garland the passionless mounds above them with choicest flowers of springtime; let us raise above them the dear old flag they saved from dishonor …”

Later on, Decoration Day became known as Memorial Day, a federal holiday observed on the last Monday in May, “an annual day of remembrance,” according to the National Archives, “to honor all those who have died in service to the United States during peace and war.”

Flags for Fort Snelling

Flags for Fort Snelling volunteer Gabrielle Wojdyla-Just of Minneapolis helps her dad, Ryan Just, place flags next to headstones at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on Saturday, May 24, 2025. Gabrielle’s mom is currently stationed overseas with the United States Navy. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

It was a decade ago, as Memorial Day 2015 approached, when a phone call to Fort Snelling National Cemetery led Malmstedt to be the change she wished to see in the world.

“I had called the cemetery to ask, ‘How do we volunteer to help put flags out?’” she recalls. “My kids were little at the time and I wanted to show them, ‘This is who Memorial Day is for’ because they weren’t understanding the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day.”

(Veterans Day, a federal holiday in November, honors military veterans.)

However, what she learned from that call surprised her.

“The person I talked to said, ‘We don’t do that anymore,’” she says.

That didn’t stop Malmstedt.

“I went on social media and was like, ‘I can’t believe the cemetery doesn’t do this — I’m still going out there so my kids can see what it’s for, if anybody wants to join me,’” she recalls. “And so I had about 12 friends and their kids come and help put out 3,700 of the tiny stick flags.”

Local news media, on site for Memorial Day, noticed the group at work.

“They asked us, ‘What are you guys doing?’” Malmstedt says. “We told them we were putting out flags and they asked, ‘Whose idea was this?’ One of my friends pointed to me and they came over and did the interview. The response we got from it was the same as mine: Nobody knew it wasn’t done. And then, a few days later, I got a call from the director of the cemetery, who asked for a meeting. I initially thought I was in trouble.”

She wasn’t.

“He thanked me immensely for what we did, because it brought to light the fact that it wasn’t done anymore,” she says.

She left the meeting feeling determined to revive the “decorating” tradition.

“That’s when I said, ‘I’m doing this, I’m going to make this happen,’” she said. “I laugh looking back, because at the time as a single mom of three little kids, I had no business taking this on. But now, this is our 10-year anniversary this year. Looking back, it’s like, ‘Wow.’ We’ve been making it happen and I really want to make sure we continue to make it happen.”

The people who work at Fort Snelling National Cemetery appreciate it.

“We all owe a debt of gratitude to Joanne Malmstedt and her team for volunteering to serve a greater good, while educating future generations on the importance of service and sacrifice,” said Marshall Murphy, deputy director of Fort Snelling National Cemetery, in a statement to the Pioneer Press.

“Fort Snelling National Cemetery has a rich history of honoring veterans on Memorial Day — including placing flags at every grave,” Murphy said. “Over time, the ever-increasing volume of work at the cemetery outpaced the cemetery staff’s ability to coordinate volunteers to assist with the transport, placement, retrieval, repair and storage of the flags each year. In 2015, Joanne saw an opportunity to serve veterans, her community and her country, and volunteered to lead this project.

“As the fifth busiest national cemetery coordinating 5,000+ interments per year and managing 193,000 existing gravesites, Fort Snelling National Cemetery is extremely grateful for support from volunteers like Joanne.”

Malmstedt hopes her story inspires others to do what her nonprofit has done.

“I would love to see other groups, other people, piggyback off this and be like, ‘Hey, you know what? We’re going to start doing this at other cemeteries,’” she says. “It would be nice if all those that are laid to rest are able to be honored and remembered, too.”

The community responds

Flags for Fort Snelling founder and president Joanne Malmstedt gives instructions to volunteers before they place flags next to headstones at Fort Snelling National Cemetery on Saturday, May 24, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Malmstedt, who also works as a mechanical adjuster for Federal Ammunition and owns a cleaning company, A Patriots Clean, says it requires a group effort to make Flags for Fort Snelling’s annual operation come together, from labor to donations.

On Thursday, volunteers were working in a parking lot at the cemetery, water sealing the wooden staffs of the flags to prevent mold growth.

They worked quickly, dipping flag bundles into buckets of clear wood sealer before placing the flags on tarps to dry in the sun.

It was volunteer work they said they felt privileged to do.

“We have multiple family members buried here,” said volunteer Tina Friedel of Osceola, Wis. “It’s just a little way to give something back.”

Nearby, Jill Cooper and her partner, Barry Gustafson, were breaking down boxes and doing other tasks needed on this preparation day. The Minneapolis couple serves in the core group every year, directing and helping other volunteers in this regimented operation.

“We don’t want to spend our Memorial Day drinking at a picnic,” Cooper says. “We want to spend our weekend here, doing something to give back.

“I know a lot of these vets did not pass away in war,” Cooper says, “but they still served, and they deserve all this respect.”

A few days earlier, as part of a fundraising effort, Malmstedt spoke to the cadets of St. Thomas Academy in Mendota Heights about the nonprofit behind the flags.

It has grown since that phone call to the cemetery: Now, Malmstedt’s nonprofit has a co-leader, MacKenzie Anderson, a board of directors and other individuals and companies who help provide storage space, T-shirts, labor and more.

“We are a small, volunteer-based nonprofit,” she told the cadets. “Myself, my partner and my other board members, all of us are volunteers. We put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of unpaid hours toward this mission every single year …

” … Now, 10 years later, it seems like it’s a well-oiled machine, but it takes a lot of work to get there,” she said. “The first year that we did this as a nonprofit, we were able to raise funds to place 10,000 flags … it was overwhelming that year, just to see 10,000 flags. However, now in our 10th year, we will be close to placing 195,000 flags.

“Not only do we place those flags Memorial Day weekend, but they are able to stay out and be visible and be out for honoring and remembering all week during that Memorial week; we also have to go back out and pick up all flags so we can store them and reuse them for years to come.

“With that being said, the cemetery does grow on average of 5,300 people every single year for interments. With those growing costs, so do our costs for flags and all of the other operational needs to be able to make this happen every single year. The only way that we make this happen and continue to honor and remember all those laid to rest at Fort Snelling National Cemetery is through the generosity of the donations that we receive and the volunteers that come and help us.”

As she spoke, one young man in particular was impressed: her son.

Related Articles

U of M researchers are planting ‘survivor’ trees in hopes of defeating Dutch elm disease

Judicial cookout for the homeless renamed for late founder Jim Randall

In 17th year, Rick’s Bike Sale surpasses $600K in donations for Dakota County nonprofits

Climate action group schedules first Ward 4 candidate forum for Tuesday

CommonBond Communities to outsource, layoff 117 from St. Paul headquarters

“Just the sheer will that she has to tackle something like this is inspiring to me,” says Logan Ogroske, an 18-year-old college student who accompanied his mother to St. Thomas Academy. “It gives me inspiration that I can tackle things, too.”

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kim Friede, a military leadership instructor at St. Thomas Academy, is also inspired — especially with the visual impact that illustrates the ripple effect of one person’s decision to step up.

“If you’ve ever passed Fort Snelling National Cemetery during the Memorial Day weekend, then you know the emotional experience that is created by a virtual sea of U.S. flags placed on each and every gravesite,” Friede told the cadets. “It simply takes your breath away.”

The cadets donated more than $2,000 to the nonprofit. Some signed up to volunteer, too.

Flags for Fort Snelling

After the Memorial Day observation, Flags for Fort Snelling is seeking volunteers to collect flags for return to storage on May 31 (and potentially continuing the work on June 1).

To register, donate or learn more, visit  flagsforfortsnelling.com.

Other volunteering opportunities: If you or your organization are interested in volunteering at a VA national cemetery near you, visit cem.va.gov/volunteer.

On a shrub-covered dune in San Francisco’s Presidio, biologist Durrell Kapan and a group of volunteers huddle around a tiny plastic condiment container placed delicately amid a cluster of orange-yellow flowers. Inside is a Silvery Blue butterfly whose inch-long wings beat sleepily, revealing its shimmering namesake hue as it sips on a cotton ball doused in fruit punch Gatorade.

Just over 80 years ago, Xerces Blue Butterfly last flapped its wings over the Presidio, becoming the first butterfly on the continent known to go extinct as a result of human activity. Now, by releasing this Silvery Blue – and over a hundred others over the past year — Kapan hopes there can be some sort of life after extinction, with these butterflies filling the role in the ecosystem that the Xerces once did.

De-extinction – the idea of bringing species back from beyond the brink or filling their role with surrogate creatures – has been an effort for decades. But last month, that idea burst into the popular consciousness when the stark white coats of “Dire wolves” (which some scientists say might be better described as genetically modified grey wolves) graced the covers of magazines across the world.  Led by a researcher from UC Santa Cruz, a group of scientists claimed to bring back the creature after it had been extinct for over 12,000 years.

“The idea of de-extinction is that it’s part of the spectrum of restoring lost species and ecological roles in environments,” said Ben Novak, lead scientist at the Sausalito-based conservation philanthropy Revive & Restore.

Both the wolf and the butterfly are part of a larger push by scientists and philanthropists across the Bay Area to bring back species from extinction or replace their roles in the name of conservation. While many in the movement say their work could be essential for preserving life on earth, some fear that use or abuse of these techniques could be a distraction — or worse, harm the very conservation cause they claim to fight for.

“We need new tools to address conservation problems – that’s essential,” said Ryan Phelan, co-founder of Revive & Restore, who helped create a nexus of researchers, ethicists, and conservationists interested in biotech and de-extinction. “These new tools need to be developed responsibly and with open transparency… No new technology today can replace the need to protect habitat.”

Biologists and conservationists largely agree that we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, a rapid loss in populations and widespread extinctions of animals, plants and other organisms across the globe fueled by human activity like habitat destruction, a changing climate, and pollution. While estimates vary, some studies suggest the planet is losing species at least 100 times faster than the “natural” rate we might expect.

As a species disappears from the environment, so too does its role in its habitat. For example, a group of grey wolves might keep the elk population in check. Without the wolves, elk might overgraze, chomping down on flora that would otherwise grow into food or roosts for other species.

“It’s like a Jenga stack. When a species goes extinct, you create a gap in that fragile structure. Life and ecosystems are a little bit like that,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley, who co-wrote ethical guidelines to de-extinction. “So what you want to do is you want to fill those blocks back in.”

For many in the Bay Area, rebuilding that Jenga stack is the goal of de-extinction: to release a group of animals that can fill in a key role in the environment and stabilize an ecosystem.

In 2020, Revive & Restore partnered with Kapan at the California Academy of Sciences to look into the genetics of the Xerces butterfly with an eye towards restoring it to the Presidio. Kapan and his collaborators investigated the DNA of the extinct Xerces and analyzed historical records of the butterfly’s behavior and habitat. Then they compared the genes and the environment to other species of butterfly and found the Silvery Blue, a butterfly out of California’s Central Coast with a similar penchant for foggy dunes and certain shrubs as the Xerces.

The butterfly might be able to serve as pollinator and prey like the Xerces, filling its empty role in the ecosystem. So over the last year, Kapan and his team captured over 100 Silvery Blues from Monterey County and brought them to the Presidio to release them.

Kapan calls the experiment a “test case of … what people are calling de-extinction,” allowing him and others to gain insight into what happens when you try to replace an extinct species with a new one.

De-extinction, though, has another side, fueled by 21st-century advances in genetics that rival science fiction.

“Habitats around the world are changing at a rate that is faster than evolution can keep up,” said UCSC biologist Beth Shapiro. “If we want a future that is both biodiverse and filled with people, we need to be increasing the tools at our disposal that allow us to help species … we need to directly modify (genes).”

Shapiro wrote the book on de-extinction, “How to Clone a Mammoth,” after becoming a world leader in extracting and deciphering DNA from ancient remains. She detailed the steps to creating a creature for de-extinction. In brief summation, she wrote: figure out the genes of an extinct creature, tweak the genes of a close relative so that it might have key traits of the extinct one, find a good surrogate mom, figure out how to raise it, and release it — ideally along with many of its kin — into the wild.

Then last year, Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup dedicated to de-extinction, tapped Shapiro to serve as their chief science officer.

That’s where she helped bring back the Dire wolf, or something like it.

According to Colossal, the company’s scientists extracted ancient DNA from millennia-old Dire wolf bones. Using that prehistoric code as a guide, they edited a handful of genes in grey wolf cells for traits they linked to Dire wolves – like a bigger frame and longer hair. They then moved their genes into embryos that, when carried by surrogate dog moms, produced wolves with fluffy white coats and some dire wolf traits.

While some, including Phelan, argued that this could be a significant stride in the science of de-extinction, any potential advances were lost in a flurry of media coverage and debate over scientific rigor and thorny ethical quandaries.

Many proponents of de-extinction as a potential tool worried that Dire wolves no longer have a role in the environment – there are no more wooly mammoths or giant sloths for the beast to hunt.

“It starts to devalue if people think (de-extinction) is all about Jurassic Park – It’s just not. It’s something much more serious, it really is about ecosystem restoration,” said Phelan.

Some feared that claiming to bring back a species would weaken efforts to protect them: fears that were fueled by statements from the Secretary of the Interior and by a push by the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act .

“We have a higher calling for these tools,” said McCauley, who called the Dire wolf experiment and its fallout the “worst case scenario” for de-extinction. “It was not just a distraction. It actually was a very significant threat to endangered species conservation.”

Others argued that the high-tech exploits would distract money and attention from already-underfunded conservation efforts. “(T)he priority ought to be saving … endangered species and not attempting to recreate extinct ecological niches,” said Ben Sacks, director of the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit at UC Davis, in an email. “I think the potential harms of charging forth into the great unknown with shiny tools and hubris to guide conservation efforts are likely to far outweigh any benefits that might come of them.”

Shapiro maintains that the experiment could offer key insight crucial to advancing the science of de-extinction, including whether the genetic changes affect the long-term health of an animal or its ability to reproduce. As of yet, there isn’t another ideal candidate for de-extinction, she argues. “If we say we’re going to go to the moon and the first thing we do is get into orbit, are people just mad because we didn’t immediately go to the moon?” asked Shapiro.

In an attempt to cut through the noise, Phelan collaborated with a group of scientists, conservationists and ethicists to create a statement maintaining that while biotechnology could have a key role in conservation, it is far from a cure-all and that without laws protecting species and efforts to protect habitats, the point of de-extinction is moot.

While the debate simmers on, the team at Colossal continues to monitor the wolves in their remote preserve in an undisclosed location, searching for hints as to how their altered genes might affect them.

Kapan, meanwhile, holds that the experiment may give clues to how de-extinction projects might proceed after releasing animals into the wild.

On one of his trips to monitor the butterflies, Kapan and a group of volunteers take a walk around the Presidio, looking for unmarked Silvery Blue butterflies – a sign that some of those released last year managed to reproduce. A volunteer calls Kapan with a sighting, and he rushes to the scene. Between them, they catch sight of two butterflies that day – a female and a male – living proof that the species is surviving on its own in the new habitat, beating their wings in the wake of extinction.