For Iowa's foremost lepidopterist, butterflies are barometers of the health of the prairie.

Dennis Schlicht remembers the piles of empty Velvet tobacco cans his grandfather left around the family farm near Hudson, Iowa.

"There were everywhere; there were barrels full of them," says Schlicht. And, he discovered, "they were the perfect size for specimens." Schlicht's specimens included any intriguing mouse or unusual insect that would run out of hiding while he was driving the tractor or baler. When he spotted one, Schlicht would jerk on the brakes, grab a red Velvet can he kept under the seat, and jump off the vehicle in pursuit.

Schlicht's parents were tolerant. They tolerated not only speciment collecting, but wavy patterns in their fields when their son -- distracted by the flocks of plovers or terns that followed his tractor -- forgot about disking in straight rows. They put up with cages in the empty chicken coop, filled with injured or orphaned animals, and they even allowed Schlicht to take in 13 baby skunks after the mother skunk had been killed.

"That, of course," says Schlicht, "was a mess."

The forbearance shown by Schlicht's parents might be a lesson for other parents who struggle with their own children's boxes of rocks and requests to nurse baby birds back to health. From a young boy who was interested in collecting everything from insects to fossils, Schlicht has become recognized as one of the foremost lepidopterists, or butterfly experts, in the state of Iowa.

Dennis Schlicht is also an extraordinary teacher. In 1992, he was named Linn County's educator of the year in recognition of his work as a biology teacher at Central City High School, where he has taught since 1976. In 1997, the Iowa Academy of Science presented him the Excellence in Science Education Award for Environmental Education. A frequent participant in lectures, field trips, and classes for science-savvy natural history colleagues, as well as other teachers, Schlicht has been lauded for his ability to explain scientific concepts patiently and clearly.

"When he taught for us, he received rave reviews," says John Dunkase, director of the UI Outreach Graduate Program in Science Education. "Dennis knows how to help teachers understand science in a simple but meaningful way. It's a gift."

Schlicht's formal training in science began at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, where his biology instructor recognized his interest in serious collecting and showed him a neglected natural history museum owned by the college.

"It was like falling into heaven," Schlicht says, remembering the 120-foot by 30-foot room filled with stuffed birds, mammals, fossils, and eggs. Identifying the eggs was a special challenge. Bleached on top by the sun, they were marked with numbers but no names. Once Schlicht figured out that the numbers corresponded to those in a 1904 publication, North American Birds Eggs, by Chester A. Reed, he was able to label them accurately.

In 1968, when he enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa, Schlicht studied entomology with John Downey, a nationally known and widely published lepidopterist. Schlicht began to focus on butterflies.

"It isn't so much the ability you have," says Schlicht of Downey's influence, "but the ability you develop. The people you meet who encourage you along the way have a lot to do with what you end up doing."

After Schlicht graduated in 1971 with a degree in biology, the two stayed in contact; when Downey later retired to Florida, he turned over to Schlicht the work he had begun on the butterflies of Iowa. That core forms the basis for Schlicht's yet-unpublished volume, The Butterflies of Iowa, currently under consideration by the University of Iowa Press.

"The book will be a major contribution to natural history literature in Iowa," says Jean Prior, a research geologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. It might also encourage others to look carefully at the world around them.

A student by nature, Schlicht continued his education at the University of Iowa, where he earned his M.A. from the Outreach Graduate Program in Science Education in 1993. The program, which is tailored for practicing teachers, offers evening courses within a 100-mile radius of students' homes or on the Iowa fiberoptic network. Students in the program also spend two summers on campus, and they have the option of attending a hands-on, summer geoscience course in Crested Butte, Colorado. A year ago, Schlicht worked with Dunkase on a curriculum that incorporated butterflies, wildflowers, and literature.

Because insect study in the Midwest has been predominantly concerned with pest species -- what Schlicht calls "traitor bugs" -- that are harmful to crops, lepidopterists in the region are often interested amateurs, people with some scientific background and a special interest in butterflies. Among this group, Schlicht's expertise is well known.

"I can think of six or seven people who Dennis has gotten going on butterfly research," says Tim Orwig, an English teacher at Morningside COllege in Sioux City. Orwig and Schlicht have collaborated on papers and projects in the field.

"Dennis is a walking encyclopedia of knowledge on location, species, how common a type of butterfly is," says another amateur lepidopterist, Frank Olsen of Cedar Rapids. Schlicht and Olsen keep duplicate copies of the state records of butterflies and skippers (a kind of cross between a butterfly and a moth) and get together annually to update them. "Dennis is the foremost lepidopterist in the state. No one can touch him," says Olsen. "He just knows too much."

Schlicht modestly deflects such praise, saying, "My big accomplishment hasn't been what I've done with butterflies, but what I've gotten other people to do with them."

Just what is it about butterflies that makes Schlicht want to get people involved? As a teacher he finds their ready accessibility and "interesting lifestyles" the perfect combination for getting young children excited about science. But he also agrees with Jean Prior, the Iowa DNR research geologist, who calls butterflies "one of the smallest and most sensitive ecological indicators we have."

Schlicht is particularly concerned with what declining butterfly populations indicate about the health of the few remaining natural prairies in the Midwest. "In Iowa, the prairie is our heritage," says Schlicht. "Our soil and our wealth come from the prairie, and yet we seem to be willing to ignore it."

Last summer, he drove 2,710 miles up and down the western prairies of Minnesota, hired by the state's Department of Natural Resources to survey butterfly and skipper populations on six prairies. "The monitoring Dennis is doing will help us get a better idea of what's going on on these prairies," says Robert Dana, a prairie ecologist with the National Heritage and Non-Game Division of the Minnesota DNR. "For the kind of work we do, Dennis has been a blessing."

But Schlicht's work has put him in the middle of a growing controversy among land management authorities over how to best maintain "remnant prairies," and it's an issue that stirs him passionately.

Based on the theory that fires caused by lightning strikes once controlled weeds naturally and enabled some prairie plants to germinate, prairie burns have become the favored method for land management. The difference now, according to Schlicht, is that prairies are no longer vast and continuous. "Prairies today have really become islands, islands surrounded by corn and beans," says Schlicht.

Burning, he says, can wipe out entire colonies of insects, many of which depend on specific prairie plants for life. The practice leaves any surviving insect with dangerously low populations. Schlicht notes that fully half of all Iowa butterfliy species are so specialized, so dependent on the conditions in which they live, that adaptation is impossible. Burning an entire habitat results in diminished insect diversity and ultimately plant diversity, due to a lack of pollinators. Schlicht recommends burning small sections of prairies in rotation instead. Unfortunately, this makes prairie care more complex for land managers.

Although he knows he has angered some resource management authorities, Dennis Schlicht is willing to speak out. That's because what he loves about nature, and what he worries about losing, is something greater than any single butterfly or insect species. It's the excitement he felt as a young boy catching insects in Velvet tobacco cans, and the thrill he feels now, when he finds a rare, hard-to-identify butterfly.

"It's something you can't put your finger on," muses Schlicht. "The bugs themselves may not be as amazing as the phenomena. Losing that is what my friend Robert Michael Pyle talks about -- the extinction of experience."

Dennis Schlicht sees the decline of species as a warning, one he hopes to make people aware of through his work and the work of his colleagues. Stepping outside his house, he reaches up to a group of black thorns on a redbud tree and, miraculously, one of the "thorns" jumps onto his thumb.

"They're treehoppers," he explains, "camouflaged to fool the birds." Holding his thumb aloft, he gazes thoughtfully at the tiny, pointed insect, and his awe is palpable. "It's so amazing," he says with a nod toward the treehopper. "There's another whole world in their small world."