According to Lorenz (1961)

Small things being done today has a great impact to the future.

This blog aims to share to the people the effect of how doing something out of ignorance can affect the innocents. Innocents who did nothing but to help in the continuous production of fruits and adds conspicuous beauty to our environment, the butterflies.

Two butterflies are feeding on their food plant.

Butterflies (scientific name, Rhopalocera) plays a significant yet crucial role in biodiversity. They are not only considered as the pollinators that help plants to reproduce, but also they act as quality life indicators to a wide range of invertebrates. They get food from flower’s nectar and help the flowers to pollinate in return (Connell, 2010). These beautiful insects also provide food for other organisms, such as birds, reptiles, amphibians and also act as biological pest control (Ghazanfar, 2016). In cooler climates, the flowers provide the butterfly with a warm place to rest. Butterflies of different species follow different patterns and look for different sizes. The female butterfly will find for its right larval food plant, so that the caterpillar will have a proper nourishment near at hand (Measures, 1976). Killing these butterflies out of ignorance is one of the main problem of our etymologists these days. Aside from predators, their number of species became lesser and lesser each year because of the man-made activities such as pollution, habitat destruction, urbanization, uses of pesticides, and unawareness of people about the importance of these little creatures (Jumalon, 2017).

Humans are assigned for the responsibility of taking good care of these creatures, but they destruct them instead. They may know what animals are, but has no idea on how to take good care of them due to lack of orientations. Thus, most of the environmentalists even the concerned citizens are finding ways on how to resolved this problem.

This movement is part of our research. My co researchers had already been disseminating information and mini seminars to the student. I'll post a blog after this one regarding about the mini seminars to the selected schools. I am sharing and writing this blog in order to reach a massive number of people and support us in saving the butterflies not just in our country but globally.

My team decided to visit the Jumalon Butterfly Sanctuary to further research about the butterflies.

Jumalon Butterfly Sanctuary

This sanctuary is located at J.N. Jumalon St., Cebu City, Philippines.

The Jumalon Butterfly Sanctuary was founded by Professor Jumalon here in Cebu City.

He had been collecting butterflies ever since he was a child. Until he grow up collecting butterfly specimen not just in the Philippines only but from all over the world and had special protected areas built for egg-laying and hatching the young.

The Butterfly Sanctuary offers:
1. Butterfly Collection
2. Art Gallery
3. Public Viewing

1. Butterfly Collection

The butterflies that are framed are preserved. Some of the dead butterflies are collected to form mosaic art works.

2. Art Gallery

The artworks and paintings here are all works by late Prof. Jumalon

Picture together with my classmates

The tall and thin woman, standing on the right side is the daughter of late Professor Jumalon. She was our tour guide in the sanctuary.

My selfie pic in The Art Gallery

3. Public Viewing

Outside the museum is the garden. This is where they preserve and breed butterflies. Endangered butterflies are being placed in the green house garden where the butterflies are not allowed to leave while the most common ones are just freely flying outside the green house.

I took a pic on this butterfly inside the green house

Visitors are allowed inside the green house to take pictures and observe the butterflies. While observing I saw a two butterflies who are mating.

Thu butterflies above are mating

Dead Butterflies

According to Jumalon's daughter the butterflies life span is quite short. Some live for only a couple of months, some only live for weeks and some only live for how many days.

This dead butterfly is lying into the ground

Catterpillars

You can find a lot of caterpillars all over the place. Meaning that the biodiversity of butterfly in this place is healthy.

Food Plants

One way of telling that the butterfly will surely live in a kind of place if their respective food plant is present. Note that every type of butterfly has a type of food plant where the butterfly hatches their eggs and feed themselves. Food plants can be anything it can be a flower, a normal plant, an herb or even a grass.

After touring and gathering all the data that we can have, it shows that:

After the tour in the sanctuary we had a meaningful talk with Professor Humaida Jumalon regarding the current Status of Rhopalocera within the area of Cebu City. According to her, when his father Julian Jumalon build the sanctuary in 1960, they recorded 190 species of butterflies all over Cebu region. On their second inventory last 2000, it decreased almost 75% and became 56 species. And on their recent inventory in the year 2013, it unfortunately dropped down into less than 30 species. This quantitative data gathered, sounds quite alarming as we realized that their species could soon be possibly protected under Endangered Species Act.

If this was happened in our country how much more to the countries who are far more modernized than the Philippines?

Factors Affecting Butterflies' Mortality

There were several factors that affects the great changes in the status of butterflies. Habitat change or loss, as well as climate change are the biggest threats to butterflies today. These delicate insects are extremely sensitive to climate change and habitat loss and require ideal conditions for their eggs to mature (Kearney, 2015). According to Professor Humaida, there were times that she observed when all of the eggs on its larval plants died. It is her first time to witness that kind of situation that even one egg did not survive.

Furthermore, the Professor observed that butterflies did not visit her sanctuary more often. And later on, she found out their neighbor has a factory machine producing big smokes in the air, contributing to air pollution and that causes the larval eggs not to survive and eventually die.

So these are the general factors that causes the butterflies to lessen their population:

1. Man made activities

2. Climate Change

3. Habitat lose due to modernization

4. Factories

5. Air Pollution

6. Ignorance

Aforesaid of ignorance and apathy towards the environment worsens the continuance destruction of butterflies in the ecological system. For instance, the manmade activities such as pollution, habitat destruction, urbanization, uses of pesticides, and unawareness of people, according to Professor Jumalon. There must be a missing link between the man and the environment, wherein animals and human interact with each other. Sharing awareness comes in, bridging gap between the ignorance of the people towards the conservation ecological environment specially the animals living within it, the butterflies. It is very important to educate, most especially, the young children not to make fun of these butterflies, because even their innocence could soon yield into worst and disrupting result in the future. Admiring their beauty will not help, protecting and saving them will.

What can you do as Person? As a Human living in this planet? Or as an individual?

1. Plant a Food Plant

2. Educate Others

3. Avoid Playing with caterpillars and killing them

Let me end this discussion with a Quote:

No Pollinators, No Pollination, No Flowers nor Plants, No Fruits and No more Humans...

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Let's save butterflies before it's too late! (Wave 1)