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REPORTS: ENVIRONMENT |
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Thursday 20
November
2003
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The
Butterfly Effect
Keane J. Shore
Can butterfly 'farming' help save the
world's vanishing rainforests?
There's a hypothesis in chaos theory
that tiny air currents rippling out from
a single butterfly's wings can swell
into a storm half a world away. If one
wing beat could alter the atmosphere,
what about clouds of the colourful
insects?
Wild theories aside, butterflies can
change the climate by helping to save
the world's remaining tropical forests.
These vast tracts of trees are often
called the 'lungs of the planet.' Their
foliage draws in the carbon dioxide that
causes global warming and converts it to
oxygen. Rainforests are home to
approximately half of the world's plant,
animal and insect species, including
countless types of butterflies.
Tropical forests are also a habitat for
butterfly farmers. Under net enclosures
hung behind small wooden huts in
rainforests ringing the earth's equator,
rural residents are 'harvesting' crops
of butterflies instead of chopping down
trees to make a living.
And every acre counts, because more than
one tree has already fallen in the
global forest. Many tropical stands are
under intense pressure from commercial
logging, cattle ranching and families
clearing land just to survive. Each
year, rainforests equalling the size of
England are lost forever.
In the Brazilian Amazon, the world's
largest rainforest, deforestation
continues at an alarming rate. The
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
warns that the Amazon could vanish by
the year 2020. Rare tropical plants have
been sources for new medicines, but as
unknown species are cleared away, so too
are potentially life-saving drugs.
Logging concessions already cover half
of the world's second largest tropical
rainforest, located in Central Africa.
Costa Rica, with its reputation as a
leader in protecting rainforests, allows
extensive logging in unprotected areas -
four-fifths of its wood stands have been
felled in the last century.
In contrast to cutting, a butterfly farm
is a small island of rainforest
preserved for the captive breeding and
growing of a few of the world's 20,000
butterfly species. The farmers sell
mounted dead specimens and dried or
'papered' butterflies to collectors and
artists. They also supply butterfly
pupae (cocoons ready to hatch) to live
exhibits in Europe and North America.
The first live butterfly conservatory
opened in Britain in the late 1970s.
There are now about 250 similar exhibits
in the world, mainly in Europe with
about a dozen in North America. Most of
the insects for these public butterfly
houses are flown in from the Third
World.
Twenty years ago, Joris Brinckerhoff and
his wife Maria Sabido started Costa
Rica's first butterfly farm, simply
called La Finca de Mariposa or The
Butterfly Farm. As their business has
grown, becoming a tourist attraction and
employing dozens, others have started
looking at butterflies in a new light.
Brinckerhoff has helped 70-odd families
set up their own small farms, and
started a company that exports
nine-tenths of Costa Rica's farmed
butterflies.
Brinckerhoff says the low-tech farms, as
small as a quarter hectare, can be
started over a year or two for about
U.S.$1,000. The main equipment needed is
a shed to feed caterpillars and package
cocoons, and a house-sized net cage that
covers the forest floor. In and around
the cage, a farmer uses local host
plants to feed the kinds of butterflies
he or she raises.
Farmers collect the pinhead-sized eggs
from the leaves where they are laid.
They grow the eggs into caterpillars,
feeding them plant cuttings. When the
caterpillars hide themselves in
chrysalises, or cocoons, farmers
collect, pack and ship them to market,
keeping some to lay new eggs in
captivity and some for wild release.
"In theory, butterfly farming is the
perfect industry for preserving tropical
forests. It provides local people living
near forests with self-employment in an
environmentally benign enterprise," says
Joris Brinckerhoff, a Costa Rican
farmer.
Butterfly farms can create employment in
rural areas where opportunities and
income are scarce. It's one of the few
industries where people living in and
around forests can earn as much as they
would in less environmentally benign
ways. It also diversifies Costa Rica's
economy beyond staple exports such as
coffee, bananas and sugar.
Many butterfly harvesters in Costa Rica
are women from low-income families. With
good markets, common sense and a strong
work ethic, a farmer can prosper. Those
that supply Brinckerhoff's export
company can earn US$700 per month,
double to triple what they can earn
elsewhere. This good money entices
farmers to preserve their existing
forests, or to re-grow trees and
indigenous plants on degraded land.
In Kenya, a study of butterfly farming
in and around the Arabuko Sokoke Forest
paints a similar picture. Butterfly
farming can be done at home with a small
investment in time, money and habitat.
While it didn't directly reduce the
illegal tree cutting common to the
forest, butterfly farmers and other
locals tended to view trees less as
fodder for fires, and more as a valuable
standing resource.
So why aren't all struggling African
agriculturists and Central American
campesinos trying to hatch similar
schemes? There is a natural limit to
this winged enterprise, says
Brinckerhoff. He already has a long
waiting list of would-be butterfly
farmers, but contracting them would
badly dilute other farmers' earnings.
For that reason, he thinks butterfly
farms alone cannot save rainforests.
"In theory, butterfly farming is the
perfect industry for preserving tropical
forests," says Brinckerhoff. It is,
after all, a pesticide-free,
environmentally benign enterprise that
provides local jobs and brings badly
needed foreign currency into developing
countries.
"In practice, however, the market is so
limited that only a few hundred farmers
worldwide can really benefit." Without
care, the global trade in butterflies
can easily be flooded and financially
cripple the industry. It happened once
in the Philippines and has come close in
Central America.
"Right now, we're at a good level of
production versus demand," says
entomologist Mike Weissmann, executive
director of the International
Association of Butterfly Exhibitions.
"But well-intentioned environmental
groups that are trying to start new
farms might be doing more damage than
good, as far as the economics of
butterfly farming go."
Canada's "Model Forest" program is a
participatory process that gets everyone
in a wooded area onboard to create
community jobs while sustainably
managing their forests. It's a Canadian
concept being put into practice in many
corners of the world.
Butterfly farming is never going to be
the latest
get-rich-quick-while-saving-the-rainforest
scheme. Weissmann believes farmed
butterflies can best help the
environment in the role of public
relations 'star' of the bug world. Live
butterfly exhibits can motivate
customers to contribute to conservation,
helping both the insects and their
homes. Some people will go the
eco-tourism route, travelling to
rainforests and opening their wallets to
the local economy.
"Butterflies are great ambassadors,"
says Weissmann. "Even people who dislike
insects will make an exception in the
case of butterflies."
"No one is going to go to a cockroach
zoo, but they'll come to a butterfly
house. Once you get them in the door,
you can introduce them to the rest of
the [rainforest] world."
Once a visitor is caught in this net of
interest, they can be told about the
forest plants and animals that
butterflies need to survive. The farms
are home to orchids and other rare
plants, ferns, fungi, monkeys, rodents
and other small animals, lizards and
reptiles, frogs and amphibians, parrots
and numerous birds, and an unknowable
number of less camera-friendly insects
playing critical parts in their small
ecosystems.
Among the world's live butterfly
exhibits is the seven-year-old Niagara
Park Butterfly Conservatory in Niagara
Falls, Ontario. The Cdn$15-million,
1,000-square-metre attraction is billed
as one of North America's largest
collections of free-flying butterflies.
Cheryl Tyndall, assistant curator, says
the conservatory flies at least 40
species and about 2,000 individual
butterflies at any time. The park breeds
half of its own live butterflies, but
buys the rest from tropical farms.
"All of our butterflies are from farms
either in the Philippines, Malaysia,
Costa Rica or El Salvador," says
Tyndall. "We don't accept anything
that's wild-caught."
The butterfly trade, estimated at
somewhere between US$5-million and
$15-million per year, also deals in
what's called 'dead stock.' Doug Curry,
an entomologist at Toronto's Royal
Ontario Museum, says the museum's
souvenir shop sells mounted and framed
butterflies, all farmed, for about
Cdn$60 each. He sees farmed butterflies
as resources that renew far quicker than
trees, with side benefits for other
creatures.
"There are a lot of other organisms that
are less charismatic that get saved in
the process," says Curry. "If the forest
has to be maintained for [butterfly]
propagation, then this is a good thing."
Whether butterfly farming in itself can
save tropical stands is a question still
up in the air. But it is one example of
seeing the forest for the trees. There
are others, such as Canada's
successfully exported 'Model Forest'
program. It's a participatory process
that gets everyone in a wooded area
onboard to create community jobs while
sustainably managing their forests.
It's a Canadian concept being put into
practice in many corners of the world,
including Chiloé, an island lying off
the southern coast of Chile. Home to
150,000 people in an area approximately
180 by 50 kilometres, the island was
once entirely forested, but only 50
percent of the temperate rainforest
remains.
Sixty Chiloé communities, covering
nearly the entire island, are now
learning how to plan and manage their
forests for the long-term. Careful
selection logging has taken root, and
there is a new emphasis on eco-tourism
and non-wood products such as honey and
hazelnuts. Both the community's income
and the area covered by trees have
increased.
"Communities are now very strong.
They've even resisted [logging] offers
from multinational companies," says
Sylvain Legault, a former CUSO cooperant
who volunteered in Chiloé for two years.
These and other forests of the future
offer practical ways of working with an
ecosystem instead of merely exploiting
it.
And that's an idea as powerful as the
beat of a single butterfly's wing.
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