The butterflies have landed

Good news for butterfly-watchers. After years of a ‘butterfly drought’, there is a spurt in the number of these insects at the Butterfly Park of the Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP).
The park had thousands of butterflies, but in the past few years, just a few hundreds of butterflies remained. New breeding techniques and special conservation programmes adopted by BBP officials have paid off as, for the first time in years, there is a rise in the number of butterflies at the park.
When the park was started in 2006 on close to eight acres, it had more than 1,000 butterflies of 20 species. But until a few months ago, the count had reduced to a few hundreds. A count revealed the park now has more than 2,500 butterflies.

Santosh Kumar, executive director, BBP, said, “We have taken special measures to increase the numbers. Weather has also been kind. As a result, for the first time, the park will have more than 20 species of butterflies with their numbers exceeding 2,500.”
Sources at the Butterfly Park said that earlier the park had more bushy plants rather than flowering ones. “While butterflies lay their eggs on the leaves of the host plant, they can be attracted only by flowering plants. Hence more and more flowering plants were planted around the park,” said a curator at the park.

Puneeth T, a regular visitor to the park, said, “There is no other place in the city where one can see and understand the entire life cycle of a species. I have been visiting the park often with my children. During their summer holidays, there were hardly any butterflies. But post-monsoon, there has been a spurt in their numbers.”
Lokanath V, entomologist at the Butterfly Park, explained to BM what went right. “We have a separate room where we breed butterflies and it is an on-going process.
We have been following this since the beginning, but recently we started experimenting with breeding of different species. Climatic conditions have been beneficial.
In summer we witness very few butterflies because of the high temperature, but now the temperature is just right for the breeding process.”
“Butterflies are known as bio-indicators. In summer, their life span is about 15 to 20 days and the count was less. We had only about 400 butterflies. Now the count has risen and they include the Blue Mormon (state butterfly of Maharashtra) which is the second-largest butterfly in India.”