The Palos Verdes blue butterfly is endemic to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, California. It is a subspecies of the wide-ranging silvery blue butterfly, a species distributed throughout western North America. It was listed as endangered in 1980, and ongoing threats to this species include habitat conversion through non-native plant invasion and ecological succession, small population size and climate change climate change
Climate change includes both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns. Though there have been previous periods of climatic change, since the mid-20th century humans have had an unprecedented impact on Earth's climate system and caused change on a global scale.

Learn more about climate change . Local biologists have worked with the Department of Defense to maintain this subspecies in captivity to guard against extinction since the 1990s.