Museum’s Exotic Butterflies Have Come a Long Way To Delight Visitors
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At home in the muggy surroundings of a New York City museum, an iridescent blue butterfly swoops and flutters with jaunty familiarity. The Costa Rican Morpho is so comfortable, in fact, that its flight through the exhibition space at the American Museum of Natural History may include a break to feed on its favorite plant or to bask in sunlight artificially manufactured to mimic its native environment.
But for this butterfly — and some others at the museum’s annual exotic butterfly exhibit, which opened last month — the journey from the rainforest in Central America has been a long one. Days before the butterflies emerge in the sterile environment of the New York laboratory, butterfly chrysalids are collected from farms such as El Bosque Nuevo in Costa Rica.
A Blue Morpho from El Bosque Nuevo might travel by Jeep through the mountainous Guanacaste province to the closest bus depot, in the town of Santa Cecilia. From there, it can expect a five-hour journey to San Jose. Then, swathed in tissue or cotton and placed carefully in a crate to prevent movement inside, it flies overseas. Many customs checks, agricultural inspections, and travel days later, it reaches its destination. With any luck, it hasn’t yet morphed into a butterfly.
Thousands of butterflies arrive in America in a similar fashion each day, turning up by the box load to support an industry that has grown into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. Worldwide, raising butterflies has turned subsistence farmers into businessmen and made endangered forests — home to many exotic butterfly species — the focus of conservation efforts.
“Tropical forests all over the world have these very charismatic, colorful creatures, and they serve as ambassadors for these habitats,” a longtime participant in the butterfly industry, Michael Weissmann, said.
In this country, the exotic butterfly trade dates back 30 years, though raising butterflies is a centuries-old practice. The ancient Chinese raised caterpillars to support the silk industry, while the first butterfly collectors emerged from Victorian England in the 19th century.
Because of the insects’ weeks-long lifespan, the exotic trade didn’t take off until airplanes and express carrier service expedited delivery, so that the insects could be transported during their pupa stage, before they transform into butterflies from caterpillars.
Today, any country serviced by carriers like DHL and FedEx is a viable butterfly exporter. Costa Rican farmers, some of the earliest to export butterfly chrysalids three decades ago, now provide most of the brilliant Blue Morphos for international exhibits. Ecuadorian breeders are known for their supply of long-winged Heliconius, while farmers in Asia provide the bulk of the distinctive black and white Paper Kite butterflies.
The Museum of Natural History exhibits as many as 70 species at a time inside its 1,200-square-foot space. About 20% of the butterflies are imported from Asia, with an equal proportion from Costa Rica and Florida. Butterflies also come from Australia and Kenya, which started a butterfly conservation project in 1993 to fight deforestation.
The Kipepeo Butterfly Project, named for the Swahili word for butterfly, employs some 800 farmers in rural villages adjacent to the Arabuko Sokoke Forest on Kenya’s eastern coast. The project, which receives funding from the government and other sources, recruits local farmers and employs them as licensed butterfly breeders. Twice weekly, butterflies are collected from their wood-framed, netted homes and sold.
The concept preserves the agricultural integrity of the land to prevent further deforestation, the project’s organizers said, and protects some of the endangered species that live there.
Costa Rica’s El Bosque Nuevo spreads over 261 acres, close to 124 acres of which is considered rainforest preserve. More than 10 years after the project was started, in 1995, solar-powered electricity, a 100-foot well, and an irrigation system have improved farming on the other parcel of land the farm owns.
Still, those familiar with the industry also call it a lucrative business that funnels an estimated $5 million a year to farmers worldwide and generates some $15 million in museum revenue. In 2004, 215 butterfly species were brought into America, out of about 11,000 species, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures. At a cost of $3 or $4 a butterfly, plus shipping, American exhibitors and researchers spend more than $1 million a year in butterfly imports.
However, the value of the butterflies in their native countries is often far greater to the rural farmers who breed them. The Kipepeo Project’s farmers, who previously raised maize and beans to support their families, can earn $500 a month raising butterflies. “In terms of Kenya shillings, that would be really good money for a farmer,” a Kipepeo spokeswoman, Maria Fungoneli, said.
“We’ve taken people who are subsistence farmers and we’ve given them a choice,” a Florida businessman who helped start the El Bosque Nuevo farm, John Fazzini, said.
The farmers at El Bosque Nuevo include a group of women who were recruited specifically for their gender. Butterfly farming allows them to continue caring for their children, their husbands, and their homes. It also frees them from sexual harassment common in other work environments, the manager of the farm, Ernesto Rodriguez, said.
With the growth and diversity of butterfly imports, the USDA has monitored the butterfly industry since 1987, regulating what species may be admitted into the country and how the insects are handled and disposed of. Exhibits that showcase exotic butterflies, for example, have at least three sets of doors to prevent butterflies from escaping. While some argue that the butterflies’ escape could threaten agriculture — the way the Gypsy Moth did — regulators are more concerned that a disease-carrying insect could be let loose.
“A lot of people would say, ‘Why are you worried about this butterfly? It comes out of the tropics, it would never stand a chance in the cornfields of Iowa,'” a senior entomologist at the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wayne Wehling, said. “But there are these other factors to consider — the several dozen parasites that might come with that and the diseases that we know nothing about.”
He said parasites piggyback onto one in 1,000 imported chrysalids, while as many as 5% of chrysalids are diseased. In both cases, the infected chrysalids and their shipping containers must be disposed of carefully to prevent further infection.
Even healthy specimens that aren’t preserved for educational or research use must be disposed of with care, by freezing, incinerating, or immersing in alcohol.
Partly because of the complex regulations, many American exhibits showcase native butterflies, which are typically bred in Florida or Texas. The Bronx Zoo’s Butterfly Garden is one such display, housing more than 1,000 butterflies and up to 55 species at a time. Like many native exhibits, the zoo lets visitors watch the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis state. Another native butterfly exhibit in Camden, N.J., breeds some of its own butterflies to present their entire life cycle. “Being able to have the whole cycle in the butterfly house makes it a lot easier,” the garden supervisor at the Eagles Four Seasons Butterfly House at the Camden Children’s Garden, Jeffrey Clarke, said.
Of about 100 butterfly exhibits in America, officials estimate only 20 are dedicated to exotic insects. Exotic exhibitors contend that their butterflies are more diverse and aesthetically popular. “You just see a much wider variety of colors and species and forms in the tropics,” AMNH’s living exhibits coordinator, Hazel Davies, said. At the museum’s tropical conservatory, Ms. Davies accepts between 500 and 600 butterflies a week to populate the exhibit. Along with the brilliant Blue Morpho, other vivid species, such as the flame-bordered Charaxes from Kenya, hovered overhead on a recent afternoon visit.
The experience offers a singular sensation: “When you walk into a butterfly exhibit, you walk into their world,” Mr. Weissman, who currently works as a consultant to butterfly exhibits, said. “There’s no other animal in the world that lends themselves to this.”