Rosetta Wang, founder of the Wild Harvest and Restoration Fund, told CBS News Bay Area that she found uprooted California pipevine piled up at a UC Berkeley construction site. She and a group of volunteers, who call themselves the "Pipevine Posse," took the plants to an Oakland backyard to keep them alive. Pipevine is the only plant pipevine swallowtail caterpillars eat.
The project
The construction is part of the Clean Energy Campus project, which replaces the campus's aging gas-fired cogeneration plant. University spokesperson Kyle Gibson told CBS that the plant is the largest source of campus emissions. The Daily Californian reports that the project costs $270 million and is expected to cut campus emissions by more than 60%.
The university's plan
In June 2026 the university published a pipevine preservation and replanting strategy on its Clean Energy Campus website. It says the affected habitat is near Stephens Hall and Strawberry Creek. It also says neither the plant nor the butterfly is protected under the state or federal endangered species acts, so mitigation is voluntary. The plan has four parts: limit excavation where possible, transplant plants, improve habitat along Strawberry Creek, and replant and expand the habitat once construction ends.
The pushback
According to the Daily Californian, activists felt "stonewalled" by the university, which Gibson disputed. Wang wants the habitat kept at its current level, which she estimated at about 2,000 caterpillars. Volunteers have also been restoring pipevine at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm, an urban farm. Students Alyssa Pun and Arman Omidavr spoke with CBS about joining the effort.
The dispute is a small, local version of a familiar tradeoff: a project with a large climate benefit that still damages habitat on site. In this case the university and the volunteers agree on the goal of keeping the swallowtails, and disagree on how much is enough.