Killing butterflies to save butterflies?

Believe it or not, it's true! Butterfly collecting actually helps save butterflies. Many governments in rainforest regions promote insect ranching and farming as an environmentally friendly alternative to logging or agriculture.

Here's how it works: Let's start with a single female butterfly. Each female can lay up to 300 eggs or more. In the wild, less than 5% are likely to survive due to predation, parasites and disease. On butterfly farms, butterflies are bred and reared completely in captivity. Under a farmer's protective care, 90% of eggs laid will survive to adulthood. Those adults then provide the farmer's next generation or "crop," and so on. Farms are able to provide larger numbers and higher quality specimens than can be achieved by collecting wild specimens.

Butterfly ranches, on the other hand, are less controlled and more a part of the environment than farms. Local villagers start a "ranch" by replanting abandoned agricultural plots in the rainforest with flowers and food plants used by the butterflies they seek to attract. Wild butterflies then lay some of their eggs on the food plants in the rancher's plot. The caterpillar "crop" is tended to increase survival rates; human presence alone deters many predators. Once the caterpillars pupate, about 70% are harvested while the remaining 30% are left to mature and repopulate the area. In this way, insect ranchers are motivated to preserve and even enhance the rainforest habitat to increase butterfly populations, which improves their earning potential.

Your purchases provide the market for these sustainable livelihoods.

For more information see this article from the Lepidopterists' Society.

But doesn't collecting put wild populations at risk of being depleted?

Certainly there are opportunists who try to exploit their local wild populations as a way to make a quick buck. However, most wild caught specimens are damaged during their life or during capture, making them unsuitable for the collector's market. Even so, it does happen. We can avoid supporting such irresponsibility by obeying the laws designed to protect these creatures and by buying only from reputable suppliers.

Many of the high quality collectible butterflies offered by Flying Colors are reared on insect farms and ranches throughout the world. Flying Colors is properly licensed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to import wildlife products. All imported specimens are legally obtained and cleared through USFWS.