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Post by Zacatak on Feb 24, 2015 12:37:50 GMT -8
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Post by nomad on Feb 24, 2015 13:06:55 GMT -8
I agree it is never going to be a cities two butterfly, its up there with the Giant Panda. A flagship of how not to conserve an endangered species.
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Post by bichos on Feb 24, 2015 16:14:04 GMT -8
A vicious circle indeed. The more scarce it becomes, the less CITES is likely to downgrade.
Then again for various reasons, birdwing farming didn't work in the Bulolo area of PNG anyway. In the long term who's to say it would work with alexandrae.
Someone just needs to step in and protect whatever prime habitat remains.
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Post by timmsyrj on Feb 25, 2015 0:29:51 GMT -8
Birdwing farming worked very well with both IFTA and Wau Institute running for many years, breeding and farming great rarities at the time including alexandrae back in the seventies and early eighties, they even gave free alexandrae pairs to large orders, unfortunately i was only a teenager at the time and couldn't afford them, i had an old list of theirs (IFTA) with miokensis, boisduvali, demophanes and admiralitatus all $15 a pair, and it was only through these that meridionalis meridionalis became available, sadly though through a number of reasons (bad management? tribal war? gold found on the land? heard all sorts of reasons) they slowly diminished, firstly cutting back on all the island species, those listed above, and concentrated on the more local mainland species, especially chimaera and goliath, they stopped with the alexandrae as they couldn't sell them, so why waste time, money and effort for something you can't sell, had it been appendix 2 back then i think there would have been more effort and more backing from the institutions, it's too late now, there's no one left there to breed them, i would think even the village of Oiwa in the Aseki district where all my goliath supremus f titan and chimaera chimaera are from have long since stopped farming them and reverted back to slash and burn to grow crops because once IFTA stopped they had no outlet for their pupae, the whole village farmed them and lived of this income. Popendetta is now a very large palm oil plantation so any chance of ranching alexandrae and increasing it's population to a harvestable size is pretty much gone.
Rich
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Post by nomad on Feb 25, 2015 9:44:29 GMT -8
I am surprised they were selling alexandrae??, the butterfly was fully protected by the time IFTA was up and running. I heard that it was available on the black market at that time,but have never seen it on IFTA lists.
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Post by exoticimports on Feb 25, 2015 10:07:25 GMT -8
I agree it is never going to be a cities two butterfly, its up there with the Giant Panda. A flagship of how not to conserve an endangered species. And that's it in a nutshell. CITES: a good idea that became a political tool. |
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Post by timmsyrj on Feb 26, 2015 7:24:29 GMT -8
IFTA was set up in 1978, 3 years after cites started on 1st July 1975, alexandrae was protected in 1966 by Papuan government who then set up IFTA to try and ranch it and other ornithoptera, alexandrae was added to cites in 1976 on appendix 2 so IFTA could breed it, I don't know exactly when alexandrae became cites 1 but I do have a PDF which is a proposal to raise alexandrae from appendix 2 to appendix 1, I don't know the date of this PDF but at the bottom it references work from 1983 and 1984 so obviously at this time alexandrae was still appendix 2 so legal for IFTA to breed.
I think probably by the time they had got a good breeding program up and running they raised it to appendix1, whether this is why they gave them away free with large orders I don't know, that maybe just "folklaw amongst collectors" I have heard the same from several sources over the years but the first time was 20+ years ago at an insect fair and I was talking to Mr Archer himself (Edward "Ted" Archer) who descovered Ornithoptera victoriae s.sp archeri and who travelled extensively thorough this area in the seventies and eighties.
Rich
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Post by exoticimports on Feb 26, 2015 11:06:13 GMT -8
Here's what probably happened:
1966 PNG government (then controlled by Australia)realizes that Ornithoptera are in high demand and "protects" them in order to generate government jobs and increased revenue through permits, licenses, and bribes.
1975 PNG gains independence from Australia. Law and order start downhill.
1976 Some CITES do-gooder who's never been in PNG decides that the beautiful OA needs to be protected. And he'll insure his employment by watching trade, and thus it goes on CITES 2 because everybody knows it doesn't deserve CITES 1...but at least he can get it on CITES 2.
1978 IFTA launched to provide much needed cash for local communities. Everybody happy.
1980s By now PNG is logged heavily, and it OA may well have deserved to move to CITES 1. But more likely, some enterprising government employee (undoubtedly from the region OA lives) realized that if he had it moved to CITES 1 he could restrict the market, still have access to source material, and corner the market himself, thereby getting rich in the smuggling trade.
2000s: Japanese collectors get whatever OA they want since they can pay for the goods. Meanwhile, more of PNG is logged.
2015: Japanese economy shot, no OA being exported, trees gone, OA near gone. CITES doesn't care.
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Post by nomad on Feb 26, 2015 13:31:04 GMT -8
exoticimports - well said, that history is spot on. The future - 2030 all the lowland Papuan rain forest gone, Ornithoptera alexandrae is declared extinct. The loss of the Worlds largest butterfly.
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Post by mikelock34 on Mar 2, 2015 16:35:28 GMT -8
You had to go to IFTA in person to get much of the "good stuff." I found that out by looking in the bottom of their driers where I discovered some wonderful specimens that they did not list publicly.
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