kenyakidz|The kenyan family website

Butterflies lift Kenya’s rarest forest from extinction

In a bid to keep one of Africa’s longest strips of coastal forest alive and unspoiled, a Kenyan project breeding butterflies has attracted some 5000 farmers and created a magnet for tourists, including Angeline Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Stretching 420 square kilometers, Arabuko Sokoke is the second most important bird forest in Africa after Congo forest ,with 230 species including the globally threatened Sokoke Scop, East Coast Akalat, Spotted Ground Thrush, Sokoke Pipit, and Amani Sunbird. Internationally recognized as a conservation site, it is also home to over 600 species of plants.

Yet the forest itself was under threat until recently, with some 86 per cent of the people living around it wanting to cut it down, according to Salim Shehe of the Kipepeo project. The reasons for the antagonism went beyond the attraction of the wood as a resource, and included poverty, land scarcity, crop damage by wildlife, and death and injuries from wild animals.

However, a series of projects to establish ways of earning and thriving on the forest , including Kipepeo, have since transformed local attitudes, with now 96 per cent of locals positive about the forest and supporting its conservation .

The butterfly project’s farmers raise butterfly pupae, which the project packs and exports to butterfly houses abroad, including in Europe and the USA.

Started in 1993,the project is now benefitting some 5,000 farmers in 26 villages, who produce 200,000 pupa, 50,000 of which are exported and the rest left at the centre to hatch and then released back to the forest.

The project’s training centre trains the community how to catch the butterflies, identify the different species, the behaviour patterns of different species , breeding habits and food plants.

The farmers then go to the forest , catch the adult butterflies, build cages for them, provide the right food for them and then take the pupae to the Kipepeo project centre where they are sorted out according to quality and species and then exported to clients in Europe and the USA.

Most of the clients use the butterflies in exhibitions, while the very rich order them for special occasions such as weddings and birthdays parties where they throw ‘butterfly showers’.

There are approximately 260 species of butterflies at the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, 871 in Kenya, 3,700 in Africa and 18,000 in the world.

Prices for different species differ range from Sh25 to sh85. Farmers make their deliveries at the centre on Mondays and Thursdays and according to Salim, a farmer can earn up to Sh 7,000 in a week.

Located near Gede ruins at the Arabuko Sokoke forest, Kipepeo butterfly project is open from Monday to Friday, from 9am to 5pm. Entry charges are Sh20 and sh10 for Kenyan citizen adults and kids, sh100 and Sh50 for nonresident adults and kids.

Written by Rose Muragu for African Laughter

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