The South
Carolina Butterfly Project
The South
Carolina Butterfly Project
The New York Times, September 15, 1998, pD4.
The practices of releasing balloons at public events and throwing rice
or confetti at weddings have fallen into disfavor because of the negative
impact they have on the environment. An alternative to these practices,
releasing butterflies, has become a booming industry that markets itself
as being the ecologically sound choice.
"The beautiful flight of the butterflies as they ascended... it
just seemed like the natural culmination to a natural event," said
Dr. Patricia Heaman of a butterfly release at her nature-loving daughter's
wedding. Her sentiments are obviously shared by many others, because the
business of breeding butterflies for release has grown dramatically in the
past few years, with about 60 companies currently in operation. With tens
of thousands of butterflies being sold each season, at $10 each for a monarch
butterfly, the business is a lucrative one.
But biologists and conservationists who study butterflies are becoming
quite concerned about the growth of this so-called "green" activity,
because of its potential to threaten wild populations of butterflies, and
because it makes the study of migratory butterflies much more difficult.
"It's really such a disgusting development," said Dr. Jeffrey
Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association. "Environmentally,
it's the worst thing you could do at your wedding."
The major concern of biologists is that raising large numbers of butterflies
in confined environments creates a prime breeding ground for parasites and
disease which then could spread to wild populations. "In natural populations,
there are all sorts of parasites present that aren't a problem until you
do captive breeding at high densities in close quarters," said Sonia
Altizer, a disease ecologist at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul
who studies diseases in monarch butterflies. "I'm definitely not in
favor of releases."
But breeders counter that they are vigilant in keeping their colonies
disease-free. "We run an extremely tight ship," said Jacob Groth
of Swallowtail Farms in California. "When diseases do come through,
they are caught immediately and destroyed." Altizer responds by saying
that most breeders raise their caterpillars on drugs that suppress diseases
but do not actually eliminate them. Also, most of the diseases that affect
monarchs are not yet known or understood by scientists and therefore cannot
be effectively prevented.
But there is no hard evidence that released butterflies are spreading
diseases to wild populations, and such proof would be hard to obtain. "If
I saw definite proof that shows this is hurting them, I would've stopped
in a minute," said Rick Mikula, of Hole in Hand, a company that sells
butterflies in Pennsylvania.
The difficulty of proving that released butterflies are harming wild populations stems from the fact that researchers can't tell which butterflies are wild and which were bred and released in a particular area. This makes research of migratory butterflies, such as the monarch, increasingly difficult, because the butterflies could have migrated naturally to the area or could have arrived from a nearby wedding.
"It's unnecessarily muddling the biology of the monarch butterfly,"
said Dr. Lincoln Brower, a biologist at Sweet Briar College in Virginia.
The butterfly breeders are regulated by the US Department of Agriculture.
Dr. Robert Flanders, a senior entomologist, is in charge of these regulations.
Flanders takes the regulations seriously, pointing out that "something
irretrievable can happen," as was the case with the accidental introduction
of the forest-destroying gypsy moth into the country. "If I make the
wrong decision, it could impact this society for many centuries."
Breeders call all of the fuss over the release of butterflies "alarmist"
for a practice that can bring joy to special events. "The thing I like
best is the emotions, reactions and how much a butterfly can touch somebody.
Butterflies are just so happy," says Chris Hundley, a former computer
industry employee now with the butterfly company Magical Beginnings in California.
And Groth of Swallowtail Farms says "These scientists are all focusing
on protecting the monarch as if it were a helpless, weak little creature.
It's hardy. It does just fine on its own."
Informed of this argument, monarch biologist Brower said "That's probably what people said about the passenger pigeon 100 years ago."
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