Post by nomad on Mar 29, 2013 6:06:52 GMT -8
Included in this thread are Michael Hudson's butterfly ranch at the Wau institute and his intriguing notes [2009] on the Ornithoptera of Papua with a special reference to O. alexandrae.
The pioneer butterfly farmers in New Guinea were Harry Borch at Maprik and Ray Straatman at Popendetta. It was at Maprik that Harry Borch showed Peter Clark the co-founder of the Insect Trading and Farming Agency [IFTA] how he had established a few native butterfly farmers to supply overseas collectors through the local postal service. Peter Clark mentioned that expatriate lepidopterists such as Harry Borch and Ray Straatman were 'entrepreneurs with a passion for bugs' and indeed they were but they also contributed greatly to the knowledge of the New Guinea butterflies.
IFTA and Michael Hudson's butterfly ranch at the Wau Ecology Institute were successful for a number of years with supplying collectors around the world with a wide variety of insects including many rare butterflies from remote localities in Papua. Butterfly farming was a important source of sustainable income for native villages across the Papuan Mainland and on its Islands. There have been numerous articles on butterfly farming in New Guinea but by far the best of these is the paper by Rob Small of the University of Cambridge : Uptake and the success of insect farming projects in Papua which is available at this link
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/RobSmallMastersThesis.pdf
This fine paper is accompanied by a series of interesting colour photographs and some notes on the history of butterfly collecting in Papua. Rob Small visited New Guinea in 2005 for the Darwin research project and more of his wonderful images may be viewed at
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/gallery.html
Rob Small's gallery contains two wonderful images of the quite remarkable gynandromorph specimen of O. priamus that was bred by a lucky butterfly farmer. In a later paper it appears that Rob Small is less than certain about the future of butterfly farming in Papua. At this link:
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/OryxArticle.pdf
The decline of IFTA and WEI butterfly ranch are well documented by the Darwin projects leader Dr Tim Bayliss-Smith, this absorbing paper [2008] can be found at this link
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/SustainableInsectCollectingAndFarmingInPNGFinalReport.pdf
The Wau butterfly Ranch in Morobe Province was a short distance away from Peter Clark and Angus Hutton's IFTA offices in Bulolo. Michael Hudson opened his butterfly ranch at the WEI in 1996. A few years earlier Michael had arrived at Wau as a peace corps volunteer. Michael became a WEI project partner in 2005 after a previous disastrous mismanagement of the institute. The consequences of this was that the Bishop Museum in Hawaii stopped its funding of WEI and Michael's butterfly ranch became its only source of income. Michael encountered many dangers and difficulties while he was running his butterfly ranch in Wau. The darkest days came in 2004 when his assistant Entomologist and his best friend Vickson Kotaseao was a few minutes away from Wau in his car when he was ambushed by bandits and shot dead!! Michael had planned to journey with Vickson but he changed his mind at the last minute. He believed the ambush was meant for him!!!
Vickson Kotaseao was the first entomologist to discover the larva of the jewel beetle of the genus Calodema. A species of jewel beetle ' Calodema vicksonni ' was named in his honour. Ulf Nylander added these notes to his original description of the new beetle. " The holotype was captured by a native lady who found this specimen feeding on flowers near her house in a very remote location in the Owen Stanley Range. She caught the beetle and gave it to her husband. Sadly enough, shortly afterwards she was dead bittern by a Papuan Blacksnake and died"!! Michael Hudson was also a specialist of the Calodema and spent much of his free time in the field studying them.
The road between Wau and Lae was often out of use through landslides and broken bridges and those that managed to use the road were in danger from bandits, sometimes as in the case of Vickson with fatal consequences. In 2007 gold was discovered on the WEI land and a illegal goldrush ensured and Michael had to ask for police help. The gold miners retaliated by cutting the WEI telephone wire [Internet] and Michael had no link to the outside world. In the following years violent disorder erupted and finally he had enough and after 15 years he left New Guinea for good. It was suggested that Michael open a butterfly ranch in a more peaceful area of Papua with better access but he declined the offer. It is believed that he his living somewhere in the United States. Here is some very revealing correspondence that Michael Hudson wrote to his friend Jacques in France about the dangers of butterfly farming in New Guinea. Jacques visited New Guinea and Michael in 1996 and a year later Michael with Vickson returned the compliment and visited Jacques in France.
" this season we have had tribal fighting in Wau and it has really disrupted our work!!! The two main tribes in Wau are fighting to control the land at Wau and the large South African gold mine that is ready to open. Several people have been killed, houses in town and whole villages outside of town burned! Our collectors/farmers have been afraid to come to town this season, so we have had to go to the villagers and concentrate on getting material from other provinces... Half my staff ran away and still have not returned to work again! It wouldn't be PNG without any problems!!! Michael in 2009 also wrote of his observation's of O. alexandrae
" I was in Popondetta about a year ago or so helping a student from Cambridge University with his PHD fieldwork. I have my doubts that alexandrae is on Woodlark, Normanby or in West Papua??? Vickson went with Matsuka to Normanby once and they saw no evidence of alexandrae or meridionalis which is the species they were really looking for. O alexandrae could be in these places, but I think it would be introduced populations. I will believe it when there is evidence and it is published. In the short time I was in Popondetta, I found some interesting facts. We found alexandrae at 900m, it was so cold at night, I had to stay up all night by the fire! This was about 3 hours drive south of Popondetta, here alexandrae feeds on a completely different Aristolochia. The locals told me that if their population feeds on the usual vine for alexandrae the larva will die. I know that there are two different species because I took photos of the usual vine which had red flowers with hairs and the one from the south has green flowers with no hairs. I think these populations have been separated so long that they have changed hostplant? There are confirmed reports of alexandrae in very remote areas far west Popondetta and even across the border north into Morobe. I know some people who operate a guest house in Tufi and they tell me that alexandrae is there as well. I stayed in a village 30km outside of town where Ray Straatman had trained people to farm alexandrae. For many years they had planted the vines in the forest around the villages, in a few hours time in the forest we found ova, larva, pupa but saw no adults, the weather was cloudy in the morning when they normally feed on flowers in the village. I will have to go back to see the adults one day!
Maybe with this Swedish Man that Francois has recommended to film alexandrae?
PNG has asked that alexandrae be downgraded to Apendix II at the last Cities meeting. For this to happen, I think there would have to be new data on the populations and if it is sustainable for export? There is no one in PNG to do this fieldwork, except me maybe, I wish someone would fund me for two years to do this work! Mike Parson's data is from the early 1980's and now oil palm has taken over much of the Popondetta plain. When we drove to the village, it was solid oil palm on bothsides of the road for 30km! The village which has alexandrae is common oil palm on one side and a logging operation on the other! I don't think alexandrae is as rare as is often thought, it exists in small, scattered populations over a very big area, like meridionalis. The adults stay in the canopy most of the time, so you normally don't see them in the forest, except for the female coming down to lay eggs.
There are a lot of alexandrae on the black market, I heard 100 pairs went to Europe a year or so ago, that is 200 alexandrae at one time!!! Of course, it can be ranched, it used to cost less than goliath on dealer's lists that I have seen from the 1970's. Some of the people in our Environment Dept are also involved in the black market trade. I think the future of this magnificent species rests in the hands of the landowners where the butterfly lives, if they can see the butterfly and make some money, then they would look after its future, otherwise they give the land to oil palm and logging to make some money. Being the largest butterfly, there is much politics and emotion attached to this butterfly and this clouds peoples thinking and good reason. I slept in the old man's house that knew Straatman and they had NOTHING, just one old broken sewing machine!!! He asked me to find him some binoculars to observe the adults in the forest and I gave him mine."
Michael's O. alexandrae observations give a very good insight into the problems that face this beautiful butterfly. Michael had some amazing news for Jacques on his extremely rare O. chimaera flavidior female that was shown on the forum recently.
"Oh yes, I remember the flavidior very well, the ONLY ONE we have collected in 15 years!!! It was collected by a man who took off his shirt and caught the female with his shirt. So it is very amazing that it is in such wonderful condition. It has been my dream to farm this species and it is not difficult to get there from Wau, but time and money is always the problem"!
Specimens of O. paradisea had appeared on the market from Karkar Island in Papua and were being sold by a Japanese dealer who shall remain nameless. Michael had this to say on the subject.
"I have never heard of paradisea being found on Karkar??? I have stayed on Kranket Island for a holiday and you can see Karkar from there, it is volcanic island, so it does have elevation over 1000m. I would say Karkar is 2 hours by banana boat from Madang town. I guess paradisea could be found there, but there is a very big population on this Island, its all agriculture, so I have my doubts unless it lives on top of a volcano? The volcano is semi-active, emitting gases, so not the best environment for paradisea. My opinion is ....... is one of those dealers that changes data to make some money"
Michael revealed
" That is why I like entomology, always more investigations to do and new things to learn."
Dedicated to the memory of Vickson Kotaseao.
I would like to thank Jacques Porteneuve for his permission to use his correspondence with Michael, his photograph of Vickson and pages from his IFTA butterfly farming manual. The cover and the introduction of this 33 page booklet are shown below.
Photograph ' Michael said ' The ray of sunshine that was Vickson '
The pioneer butterfly farmers in New Guinea were Harry Borch at Maprik and Ray Straatman at Popendetta. It was at Maprik that Harry Borch showed Peter Clark the co-founder of the Insect Trading and Farming Agency [IFTA] how he had established a few native butterfly farmers to supply overseas collectors through the local postal service. Peter Clark mentioned that expatriate lepidopterists such as Harry Borch and Ray Straatman were 'entrepreneurs with a passion for bugs' and indeed they were but they also contributed greatly to the knowledge of the New Guinea butterflies.
IFTA and Michael Hudson's butterfly ranch at the Wau Ecology Institute were successful for a number of years with supplying collectors around the world with a wide variety of insects including many rare butterflies from remote localities in Papua. Butterfly farming was a important source of sustainable income for native villages across the Papuan Mainland and on its Islands. There have been numerous articles on butterfly farming in New Guinea but by far the best of these is the paper by Rob Small of the University of Cambridge : Uptake and the success of insect farming projects in Papua which is available at this link
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/RobSmallMastersThesis.pdf
This fine paper is accompanied by a series of interesting colour photographs and some notes on the history of butterfly collecting in Papua. Rob Small visited New Guinea in 2005 for the Darwin research project and more of his wonderful images may be viewed at
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/gallery.html
Rob Small's gallery contains two wonderful images of the quite remarkable gynandromorph specimen of O. priamus that was bred by a lucky butterfly farmer. In a later paper it appears that Rob Small is less than certain about the future of butterfly farming in Papua. At this link:
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/OryxArticle.pdf
The decline of IFTA and WEI butterfly ranch are well documented by the Darwin projects leader Dr Tim Bayliss-Smith, this absorbing paper [2008] can be found at this link
www.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/insectfarming/SustainableInsectCollectingAndFarmingInPNGFinalReport.pdf
The Wau butterfly Ranch in Morobe Province was a short distance away from Peter Clark and Angus Hutton's IFTA offices in Bulolo. Michael Hudson opened his butterfly ranch at the WEI in 1996. A few years earlier Michael had arrived at Wau as a peace corps volunteer. Michael became a WEI project partner in 2005 after a previous disastrous mismanagement of the institute. The consequences of this was that the Bishop Museum in Hawaii stopped its funding of WEI and Michael's butterfly ranch became its only source of income. Michael encountered many dangers and difficulties while he was running his butterfly ranch in Wau. The darkest days came in 2004 when his assistant Entomologist and his best friend Vickson Kotaseao was a few minutes away from Wau in his car when he was ambushed by bandits and shot dead!! Michael had planned to journey with Vickson but he changed his mind at the last minute. He believed the ambush was meant for him!!!
Vickson Kotaseao was the first entomologist to discover the larva of the jewel beetle of the genus Calodema. A species of jewel beetle ' Calodema vicksonni ' was named in his honour. Ulf Nylander added these notes to his original description of the new beetle. " The holotype was captured by a native lady who found this specimen feeding on flowers near her house in a very remote location in the Owen Stanley Range. She caught the beetle and gave it to her husband. Sadly enough, shortly afterwards she was dead bittern by a Papuan Blacksnake and died"!! Michael Hudson was also a specialist of the Calodema and spent much of his free time in the field studying them.
The road between Wau and Lae was often out of use through landslides and broken bridges and those that managed to use the road were in danger from bandits, sometimes as in the case of Vickson with fatal consequences. In 2007 gold was discovered on the WEI land and a illegal goldrush ensured and Michael had to ask for police help. The gold miners retaliated by cutting the WEI telephone wire [Internet] and Michael had no link to the outside world. In the following years violent disorder erupted and finally he had enough and after 15 years he left New Guinea for good. It was suggested that Michael open a butterfly ranch in a more peaceful area of Papua with better access but he declined the offer. It is believed that he his living somewhere in the United States. Here is some very revealing correspondence that Michael Hudson wrote to his friend Jacques in France about the dangers of butterfly farming in New Guinea. Jacques visited New Guinea and Michael in 1996 and a year later Michael with Vickson returned the compliment and visited Jacques in France.
" this season we have had tribal fighting in Wau and it has really disrupted our work!!! The two main tribes in Wau are fighting to control the land at Wau and the large South African gold mine that is ready to open. Several people have been killed, houses in town and whole villages outside of town burned! Our collectors/farmers have been afraid to come to town this season, so we have had to go to the villagers and concentrate on getting material from other provinces... Half my staff ran away and still have not returned to work again! It wouldn't be PNG without any problems!!! Michael in 2009 also wrote of his observation's of O. alexandrae
" I was in Popondetta about a year ago or so helping a student from Cambridge University with his PHD fieldwork. I have my doubts that alexandrae is on Woodlark, Normanby or in West Papua??? Vickson went with Matsuka to Normanby once and they saw no evidence of alexandrae or meridionalis which is the species they were really looking for. O alexandrae could be in these places, but I think it would be introduced populations. I will believe it when there is evidence and it is published. In the short time I was in Popondetta, I found some interesting facts. We found alexandrae at 900m, it was so cold at night, I had to stay up all night by the fire! This was about 3 hours drive south of Popondetta, here alexandrae feeds on a completely different Aristolochia. The locals told me that if their population feeds on the usual vine for alexandrae the larva will die. I know that there are two different species because I took photos of the usual vine which had red flowers with hairs and the one from the south has green flowers with no hairs. I think these populations have been separated so long that they have changed hostplant? There are confirmed reports of alexandrae in very remote areas far west Popondetta and even across the border north into Morobe. I know some people who operate a guest house in Tufi and they tell me that alexandrae is there as well. I stayed in a village 30km outside of town where Ray Straatman had trained people to farm alexandrae. For many years they had planted the vines in the forest around the villages, in a few hours time in the forest we found ova, larva, pupa but saw no adults, the weather was cloudy in the morning when they normally feed on flowers in the village. I will have to go back to see the adults one day!
Maybe with this Swedish Man that Francois has recommended to film alexandrae?
PNG has asked that alexandrae be downgraded to Apendix II at the last Cities meeting. For this to happen, I think there would have to be new data on the populations and if it is sustainable for export? There is no one in PNG to do this fieldwork, except me maybe, I wish someone would fund me for two years to do this work! Mike Parson's data is from the early 1980's and now oil palm has taken over much of the Popondetta plain. When we drove to the village, it was solid oil palm on bothsides of the road for 30km! The village which has alexandrae is common oil palm on one side and a logging operation on the other! I don't think alexandrae is as rare as is often thought, it exists in small, scattered populations over a very big area, like meridionalis. The adults stay in the canopy most of the time, so you normally don't see them in the forest, except for the female coming down to lay eggs.
There are a lot of alexandrae on the black market, I heard 100 pairs went to Europe a year or so ago, that is 200 alexandrae at one time!!! Of course, it can be ranched, it used to cost less than goliath on dealer's lists that I have seen from the 1970's. Some of the people in our Environment Dept are also involved in the black market trade. I think the future of this magnificent species rests in the hands of the landowners where the butterfly lives, if they can see the butterfly and make some money, then they would look after its future, otherwise they give the land to oil palm and logging to make some money. Being the largest butterfly, there is much politics and emotion attached to this butterfly and this clouds peoples thinking and good reason. I slept in the old man's house that knew Straatman and they had NOTHING, just one old broken sewing machine!!! He asked me to find him some binoculars to observe the adults in the forest and I gave him mine."
Michael's O. alexandrae observations give a very good insight into the problems that face this beautiful butterfly. Michael had some amazing news for Jacques on his extremely rare O. chimaera flavidior female that was shown on the forum recently.
"Oh yes, I remember the flavidior very well, the ONLY ONE we have collected in 15 years!!! It was collected by a man who took off his shirt and caught the female with his shirt. So it is very amazing that it is in such wonderful condition. It has been my dream to farm this species and it is not difficult to get there from Wau, but time and money is always the problem"!
Specimens of O. paradisea had appeared on the market from Karkar Island in Papua and were being sold by a Japanese dealer who shall remain nameless. Michael had this to say on the subject.
"I have never heard of paradisea being found on Karkar??? I have stayed on Kranket Island for a holiday and you can see Karkar from there, it is volcanic island, so it does have elevation over 1000m. I would say Karkar is 2 hours by banana boat from Madang town. I guess paradisea could be found there, but there is a very big population on this Island, its all agriculture, so I have my doubts unless it lives on top of a volcano? The volcano is semi-active, emitting gases, so not the best environment for paradisea. My opinion is ....... is one of those dealers that changes data to make some money"
Michael revealed
" That is why I like entomology, always more investigations to do and new things to learn."
Dedicated to the memory of Vickson Kotaseao.
I would like to thank Jacques Porteneuve for his permission to use his correspondence with Michael, his photograph of Vickson and pages from his IFTA butterfly farming manual. The cover and the introduction of this 33 page booklet are shown below.
Photograph ' Michael said ' The ray of sunshine that was Vickson '
Attachments:
days. Happy long days spent among butterflies and other fascinating insects both in his butterfly ranch and in the field. An enormous amount of specimens were available from all over Papua for study. The Wau butterfly ranch and IFTA provided such an important resource for collectors and both are sadly missed, good material from Papua being non existent today. The Wau Ecology institute was visited by leading scientists around the world and WEI held important reference collections of Entomological specimens. The WEI produced many fine handbooks including' The Butterflies of the Bulolo-Wau Valley by Mike Parsons.
Thank you for adding the early IFTA specimen price list.