A colorful dome serves as a cage or “jail” for the 1,500 lepidoptera that make up the butterfly garden of the Megua Biothematic Park, created to protect them from natural predators, allow visitors to learn about each of the four phases of their life cycle and observe them any day of the year.
In principle, the butterflies flew freely through the 32 hectares of tropical dry forest that make up the park, but it was not possible to enjoy its beauty every day of the year.
For this reason, the forestry engineer Iader Lanilla decided to build a space of about 1,000 square meters, with special and very original characteristics, to offer visitors a different experience.
“The park was created 20 years ago. From the beginning it was designed to teach and sensitize visitors in the protection, care and proper use of natural resources. Among those resources are butterflies. Of the insects, the butterfly is the one that attracts the most attention due to its attractiveness, but in general, what we always seek is to protect all those who make up the dynamics of life on the planet. No matter how small and insignificant they may seem, they have their importance and function within the entire food and life chain that governs the planet”, says Iader.
He adds that “since we created the Megua Biothematic Park we had the butterfly farm, what happens is that we had it in the open air. In other words, we planted some very attractive plants for butterflies, people came and saw them. The only difficulty we had was that, depending on the time of year, the existence of flowers and host plants, they could be seen. Simply depending on the time, the time of year, there was the possibility of seeing a little, seeing nothing or seeing a lot”.
“The idea of setting up the butterfly garden is that the visitor to the park could observe the butterflies regardless of the time of year or the hour and that they could be in contact with them. Over time we have been improving it”, says the ‘monarch’ of the butterflies.
He explains that “we had them in the open air -because the idea of the park is freedom-, but we decided to lock them up in a kind of cage, as if it were a prison and, it turns out not, it’s the opposite, because when the butterflies are locked up it’s in order to protect them, in such a way that predators do not eat them in any of their life stages, whether in an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or as an adult butterfly”.
“Already with the idea of returning to the mixed butterfly garden, with butterflies in freedom and in such a way that they can be seen directly, we exposed our project to Primax of Colombia. The company studied it and supported us with the economic resources to be able to crystallize it as we had planned”, says Iader.
The implementation of the project took about eight months. “The important thing was that it wasn’t a copy, we don’t like to copy ideas from other similar projects because we’re embarrassed to have to copy when there’s so much to invent,” he asserts.
Teaching
He states that “we simply saw what the life cycle of the butterfly was and we designed the butterfly house taking into account the four stages. The first is the egg, for this reason we designed an egg-shaped dome and that is the setting where we see theoretical and mythological aspects, curiosities and the entire taxonomic part. We take advantage of that dome with a stained glass system where, sequentially, we see the four stages: the bottom part, the types of eggs, the colors, the sizes; then the part of the caterpillars, in the forms, how they are; and higher up the chrysalis or pupae, which they call, types, colors, shapes, sizes; and in the upper part, the butterflies, both day and night”.
He explains that “the diurnal ones are the colored butterflies, which are more or less 3,500 species worldwide, and the moths, which are the nocturnal ones, which are considered to be around 45,000 species and are the darkest, to which they are afraid because they say they are unlucky. It is precisely in that dome that all these legends, popular tales are discussed and it is explained why they are right or wrong in it”.
“Inside the ship are the live butterflies and all the nutritional plants, the hosts, the water and the elements of their habitat. There is capacity to have 1,500 butterflies per month; What happens is that, as it is a development project, the idea is to release them as they are born, into their natural environment. In the warehouse we have them as samples so that people get to know them, see them, but the objective is to release them so that they fulfill their function because within the trophic cycle it is a species that, in addition to pollinating, is food for other animals that are insectivores ” , indicates Iader, an admirer of the monarch butterfly and of the “yellow ones, of which García Márquez spoke”.
The butterfly farm has “more or less 25 species, all are local.”
“The butterflies that attract visitors the most are all, but they always ask about the monarch, which is well known; we have the yellow butterfly by Don Mauricio Babilonia, by Gabriel García Márquez, and the ones we like the most are the owl, a dark-colored moth with one eye painted, that is its defense system so that predators believe it is a big animal and they get scared, but in reality it’s a hoax because her body is small, the wings are big but it doesn’t have any meatiness”, she recounts.
Regarding the care that the butterfly farm requires, he says that “it is precisely that their predators do not enter. There is the whole cyclical part, they must have a place to lay eggs. There we have the host plants, those eggs turn into caterpillars and feed on that plant; the next step is to turn into a chrysalis and from there it transforms into an adult butterfly.”
The resources with which the park works come from the value of the entrance paid by visitors: 20 thousand pesos. “At the level of visitors, we have 30 a day, with 900 a month we are very good. However, there are good and bad times. For us, the high seasons are on class dates, where we have university students, from colleges, schools, SENA personnel, companies; It comes mostly from April to June, then from August to October”.
“Our contribution is to produce butterflies that are from the region and release them in the same park and that they seek their destination. That will allow us to prevent these species from disappearing. We always have a sampler, but we are freeing up so that the space is not saturated, which only has a carrying capacity of 1,500 butterflies”, he says.
He adds that “they are all in danger of extinction. The use of so much agrochemical puts them at risk, whether it contaminates the air, the leaves or the fruits where they perch, they are all in danger depending on the region where they are. Fortunately, in the Atlantic, technical crops are not very common and the peasant communities are very humble people, very hard-working, and they do not have enough to poison their plantations. The fruits are generally organic. That helps us preserve butterfly species.”
A DOMO serves as cage for 1,500 butterflies. There visitors to the Megua Biotheme Park can learn about the species and hear stories about the fears generated by some moths. /Photos Megua Biotheme Park
IN THE PLACE there are 25 species of butterflies, all native.