ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

Entomologists have long affirmed that it is not the collecting of insects out of the wild that adversely affects their populations, but the destruction of their habitats and hostplants (the plant an insect species requires to reproduce). Leading environmentalists and entomologists agree that insect collecting can actually aid in the preservation of insect species by offering an economic incentive to preserve the habitat in which this “sustainable rainforest crop” thrives.

This was never clearer to me than on a trip I made several years ago to some of the most remote jungles of Amazonian Peru. I had hired one of the area’s leading authorities in butterflies to be my guide as we searched for a particularly beautiful species of Morpho butterfly. En route to his secret hunting grounds, we stopped by a hillside that was covered in scrub brush and tall grass. He explained that several years before it was one of the best places in Peru to find huge populations of Morpho butterflies. But it had since been clear-cut and, as the Morpho’s hostplant had been destroyed along with the timber, they were now extinct from the area.

Hours of hiking and four-wheeling later, we arrived at his secret spot. We were met by several natives from a local indigenous tribe who were employed year-round catching butterflies by my guide’s company. We proceeded to the bank of a small river that was fairly alive with butterflies. The sandy riverbank was only about 100 meters long, but according to my guide, this was the 11th year of almost constant collecting in that small area, and each year their take had increased. The money earned by the indigenous families and the money paid to the chief for the use of their tribal lands economically justified their protection from development. It was one of the only sources of income available to people in such a remote locale short of farming or ranching the land.

Writing for National Geographic in January of 2001, Ronald Cave agrees:

“With such a bounty on (insect) heads, some conservationists worry that populations could be depleted by the trade. But our research suggests otherwise.

Catching insects isn't like hunting Jaguars. Millions of (insect) eggs, larvae and pupae remain underground, while collectors take only adults... The biggest threat to scarabs is not insect hobbyists, but loss of habitat as tropical forests are converted to farms. We believe that regulated beetle collecting by local people -- and in time, beetle farming -- could actually help slow this process."