Male Onithroptera Alexandrae Butterfly

Female ornithoptera alexandrae

Butterfly Farming: Conserving the Rainforest

The world’s largest butterflies, Birdwings, are being farmed or ‘ranched’ by villagers in Papua New Guinea and Irian Jaya to provide economic incentives to landowners to conserve valuable virgin tropical forest. Classified as a renewable natural resource in PNG, butterflies are collected extensively to be sold to collectors, naturalists, scientists and artists around the world. Most are in no danger of extinction but in the case of the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing (Ornithoptera alexandrae)

and other birdwing butterflies, destruction of their habitat from extensive logging and expansion of oil plantations has led to declining numbers and the government now requires that these species are bred to supplement remaining populations.

To ‘ranch’ the butterflies, flower gardens are planted by villagers to provide nectar sources to attract adults and to provide food for caterpillars. The chrysalides are then collected to obtain first class adults for sale. The PNG government has allowed the Insect Farming & Trading Agency (IFTA) to help one village grow and sell the Goliath Birdwing (the second largest butterfly in the world) and for other programmes to be established for the Meridionalis Birdwing and the Paradise Birdwing. Eventually the PNG government hopes to be able to allow villagers to ranch and sell about 100 specimens per year to the IFTA.

Overall, the IFTA sells and exports over $400,000 worth of PNG insects: butterflies make up a large percentage of this revenue but stick and leaf insects and some of the large, spectacular beetles are also in demand. Many villagers make hundreds of dollars a year in a country where there is still relatively low formal employment (~15%). This well-paid trade has all but halted the black market trade in insects especially as all exports have to be issued with a permit. This is not only so that the Agency can control the market and keep prices stable but also to ensure that maximum revenue is returned to the villagers. A similar scheme has been initiated in Irian Jaya where more than 1,000 families benefit from selling butterflies and over 60% of the earnings from the exported insects are given back to the communities. Through the success of these agencies, villagers have come to realize the importance of the forest as habitat for the insects they collect and as a source of income. Without the increasing export trade in insects, villagers would clear the forests in order to plant cash crops. Conservation of the forest also helps to preserve the rich biodiversity of flora and fauna including over 3000 species of orchid and most of the world’s birds-of-paradise and bower bird species.

For more on this article please see:

http://www.new-ag.info/99-3/focuson/focuson6.html

Butterfly Farming to Help Save Rain Forest

Researchers at the University of Warwick’s plant research arm Warwick HRI have received a £295,000 Darwin initiative grant to develop a butterfly farming industry in Guyana that will help support 5000 people in 16 rainforest communities and help save the rainforest itself.

The University of Warwick team will work with the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation in Guyana. The conservation reserve around that centre and the surrounding North Rupununi District is a rich source of exotic butterflies that are sought after by many western butterfly farms and other institutions that exhibit collections of live butterflies. Each individual butterfly pupa that they can ship to one of these customers can be worth between 2 and 5 UK pounds.

The creation of a sustainable butterfly farming business would help preserve the local rain forest in two ways. Firstly the local population will have a sustainable business that allows them to turn away from other activities that would involve yet more forest clearance and secondly that butterfly farming actually needs to conserve the rainforest because that is the butterflies’ preferred habitat.

The research will be led by Dr Doreen Winstanley and Neil Naish from Warwick HRI, the University of Warwick’s plant research arm who already have experience of butterfly farming through their University spin out company – Warwick Insect Technologies Ltd. They will undertake a biodiversity survey of the butterfly community and their host plants within the Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development Reserve.

The survey will work with the indigenous Amerindian communities within the reserve and the surrounding North Rupununi District with the ultimate aim of enhancing the livelihoods of the 5000 individuals in the 16 rainforest communities in the Iwokrama forest through the sustainable development of a low-tech butterfly farming industry. The butterfly farming will be set up as a co-operative within the North Rupununi District of Guyana.

For more on this story see:

http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/environment_sciences/report-66402.html