Rob Small's Masters Thesis: Uptake and the success of insect ...

The collecting areas that Ken uses are at least a 2-hour walk from his home. For collecting
he makes use of the forestry trails (see photograph 13) within the plantations as well as
following the creeks that flow through them. The only equipment that he requires for this
work is a butterfly net made from mosquito netting and folded paper to store butterflies.
Ken estimates that on a good day he will be able to sell about 10% of the butterflies that he
catches. Whilst walking with him on a collecting trip it became evident that he does not
capture all the butterflies that he comes across. Some are only worth 20 to 30 toea and he
does believe that it is worth trying to capture anything in this price range. He chooses not to
collect other insects such as beetles as he would have to go into the bush to find them rather
than follow the forest trails and does not feel that their value is worth the effort. Also, he
prefers to concentrate on catching Papilio ulysees (P. ulysees) because it attracts a higher
price than most other specie. He will earn K2.5 for a perfect specimen (equivalent to 50p).
The particular technique that Ken uses to capture P. ulysees can be seen in photograph 14.
This involves catching a female of the species, killing it and then attaching it to a stick. The
dead female then attracts males of the species that Ken is easily able to catch.
As mentioned before, the areas in which Ken collects is open access for butterfly and insect
collectors but the forestry company that owns the land doesn’t allow gold panning as this
can destabilise soils and cause root damage to trees. Also many people from New Camp
use the plantation as a site for collecting butterflies but the collectors have informally
divided the plantations up so that each person has their own particular collecting area.
There have been several violent disputes among the collectors over the prime collecting
locations.
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