World Butterfly Day: Creating a future, finding space for nature’s symbol of hope and change

New Delhi: The closely packed houses of south Delhi’s Mandakini Enclave are an unlikely place to set up a butterfly garden. But that’s just what Anil Kapoor did and now says proudly that there are more than 15 butterfly species in his society at any point in the day.

It all started one afternoon about four years ago. The 76-year-old garment exporter was looking through his DSLR camera at Delhi’s Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary and found his new calling – to conserve and propagate the colourful winged insects that are the subject of childhood stories of hope and change, poetry, and art. And most crucially, are vital pollinators and a pointer to a healthy, clean environment.

Aware of their importance and worried about the dwindling habitat of butterflies, Kapoor decided to look no further and set up a butterfly garden in his residential society in Alaknanda area in 2019.

“I planted 300 plants that are conducive for butterflies. At present there are more than 15 species of butterflies at any point of time through the day,” Kapur told PTI ahead of International Butterfly Day on Tuesday.

Mandakini Enclave residents can now see native butterflies, a rare sight in the busy and polluted national capital, flying from pods to plants. The species include ‘dark grass blue’, ‘common pierrot’, ‘castor’, ‘tiger’, ‘common crow’, ‘lemon pansy’, ‘peacock pansy’ and ‘eggfly’.

Kapoor, who balances his business with his passion for photography and nature, has successfully created a nesting and breeding ground for hundreds of butterflies across species with the help of the Delhi chapter of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), a pan-India wildlife conservation organisation that has developed a butterfly park at the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary.

He is not alone. Other nature lovers over the years have also focused their time and energy to establish butterfly habitats across Delhi-NCR to induce healthy population of the insects and create bio corridors for safe passages.

The BNHS’ Conservation Education Centre (CEC), located inside the sanctuary, started monitoring butterflies in Delhi in 2017 and took action after noticing a lack of healthy habitat and safe corridors.

“We started from Asola Bhatti wildlife sanctuary by building a butterfly park there in 2017. We have also been doing education outreach programmes. Then we started spreading across Delhi, helping people with setting up butterfly gardens and habitats,” Sohail Madan of BNHS told PTI.

Working with the Delhi government’s environment and forest department, BNHS has introduced over 90 butterfly habitats across home gardens, hospitals, schools, and resorts in Delhi.

“We educate people about butterflies and the specific plants on which females lay eggs and caterpillars feed. We also distribute the plants that are required for butterfly habitats,” the conservationist said.

Conservationists offer tips to grow a home garden for butterflies -- the curry plant, for instance, which is host to the ‘black mormon’ butterfly, ‘patharchatta’ (Kalanchoe pinnata), host to ‘red pierrot’, and ‘vajradanti’ (Barleria prionitis), which is host to the ‘lemon pansy’ and ‘common leopard’ butterflies.

The organisation is also working with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and the Public Works Department (PWD), helping them with “streetscaping, educating and advising them on how to make these areas more pollinator friendly”.

Why are butterflies important? According to Shah Hussain, wildlife ecologist and scientist in-charge at Delhi’s Aravalli Biodiversity Park, apart from being great pollinators, butterflies are bioindicators – that is, they help assess an ecosystem’s health and diversity.

“Butterflies are great pollinators. They pollinate the vegetation and out of that you get seeds. Seed is the future of anything, plant or animal. At the same time, they are bioindicators, because they require a range of host plants and a great number of other animals use them as a food base,” Hussain told PTI.

One species, he explained, requires 10-15 different species of plants in an area throughout their lifespan, from laying eggs to feeding on leaves as caterpillars and then attaching themselves to the plant as a pupa before starting over as a butterfly.

“So if you have 100 species of butterflies in an area, you have more than 1,000 species of plants in that area. It also indicates a clean and pollution free environment. You won’t see them on roads because they are very sensitive,” the scientist added.

At his RWA garden, Kapur has made sure that no pesticide, insecticide or any other chemical is used in and around the butterfly habitat.

“Any place that has butterflies indicates it is a healthy environment. Butterflies won’t come to any vegetation that has pesticide, insecticide or any other chemicals so we use only compost manure that we prepare from waste collected in the society,” Kapur said.

Increasing urbanisation and fragmentation of green areas across the city have impacted the healthy growth of butterflies. However, things have begun to change over the last few years with sustained efforts from people such as Hussain, Madan and Kapur.

Hussain’s team started developing the Aravalli park and a butterfly conservatory within in 2002. From 25 butterfly species at the time, the number has gone up to 115 species across the year.

The increased number can also be credited with having green areas at a close distance across the urbanised landscape, which provide butterflies with “bio corridors” for safe passage.

“Not only do corridors provide safe passage, they are also very important for gene flow so there is no inbreeding. So if a butterfly population is confined to a small area, they will have the same gene pool and diseases will spread,” Hussain noted.

The butterflies at the biodiversity park near south Delhi’s Vasant Vihar are connected to other green areas through corridors at Nelson Mandela road, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Sanjay Van, and Qutub area.

“But there are other areas across the city where there is a small population of butterflies but they cannot migrate because there is no corridor. So a lot of work still needs to be done,” he added.

According to the Zoological Survey of India, there are over 2,300 butterfly species found across the country.