Butterfly Farming in the East Usambara Mountains - Eastern Arc ...

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utterflies is stronger than demand for butterfly species from other areas of the world where butterfly farming is more common. 2 2.1.3 Seasonality of Market The project will mediate the effects of seasonality in the market by preparing farmers for periods of low sales, selling dead stock for which there is no season, and by supporting the creation of a domestic display that will provide demand for butterfly pupae during the northern hemisphere’s winter. 2.2 Shipping and Payments 2.2.1 Communicating with Buyers Email is by far the cheapest and most reliable form of communication in Tanzania, and is the method that the Amani Butterfly Project uses to communicate with all of its potential buyers. Once sales begin, buyers will mail an order form available on the Internet to the project staff. 2.2.2 Shipping The ability to ship to the market quickly is crucial for butterfly farming. If shipments are delayed by more than one or two days, many pupae will hatch in the shipping boxes before they have reached their final destination. Ideally, shipments should reach their final destinations in 5 days or less. The project plans to ship butterfly pupae in Styrofoam lined cardboard boxes via DHL. The DHL head office in Dar es Salaam has indicated that it will be possible for the project to meet their courier bus from Tanga in Muheza. DHL will then meet the bus in Dar es Salaam and put the shipments on a plane the same night. 2.2.3 Payments The project will use electronic bank transfers to receive payments from overseas. The project’s bank account will be in Tanga at a bank capable of international transfers. Once trust is built up between the project and regular buyers, the project’s working capital will allow the project to let buyers pay the project every three or four months, rather than after every shipment. This will save buyers money on electronic transfer fees. Butterfly farming groups will be paid based on the number of pupae they provided each month. At first they will be given 55% of the market price, which should total to 65% of project earnings once 15% shipping losses for which buyers are not charged are factored in. Funds will be transferred into their bank accounts in Muheza on a monthly basis. To access these funds, groups must hold meetings and present the project manager with the minutes of the meeting. To insure this process is followed, the project will hold the bankbooks for each group and the groups’ signatories will come to collect their bankbooks with the minutes of their groups meeting. The 7% development fund will reside in the Amani Butterfly Project Group’s bank account in Tanga. The group’s executive committee manages this account. Funds will be transferred to this account on a monthly basis and records will be kept to indicate the percentage of the fund that each village is entitled to. 2 Slone et al. 1997 “A comparison of price, rarity and cost of butterfly specimens: Implications for the insect trade and for habitat conservation” Ecological Economics 21: 77-85 31
3) History of working with Communities In the July of 2002, a volunteer University of Dar es Salaam student and myself were introduced to the village governments of Kisiwani, Msasa/IBC, Shambangeda, and Kwezitu with a letter from the District Executive Director of Muheza. Then we presented the idea of a butterflyfarming project. These four villages were chosen based on their proximity to good butterfly forest, as indicated by my research, and their relative distance from the Amani Nature Reserve, which was initially concerned about poaching of butterflies from the reserve. While some distance from the Amani Nature Reserve was an important factor in choosing villages, villages that were too far away from the Amani area were also not considered because the project would work best if based in Amani where Internet communication and reliable public transportation are available. 3.1 Village Government Presentation The presentation to the village governments outlined the following points in this order: • Although the Division of Forestry and Beekeeping had been convinced of the merits of the potential project, the Division of Wildlife had not yet been consulted and would have to give final approval for the project. • Butterfly farming exists in many parts of the world and has been very successful in Kenya. A project here would be similar to Kenya except that the villages would control the market like the local dairy cooperative. 3 • A thorough description about the butterfly lifecycle and how farming would work (with illustrations). • That the project will work best by incorporating people who lack options for other incomes including women and young people. • Equipment will be provided and their will likely be a small registration fee to become a member and to be allowed to catch butterflies from the wild. • Butterfly farming would not effect the environment in a negative way because of the limited number of butterflies required to start very large populations • When pressed for details on potential earnings, I said that I believed the potential existed for farmers to earn around an extra 100,000 TSH per year for work about 4 days a month. I said pupae prices would be around 600 TSH each. 4 • If interested, villages should elect three representatives to serve on the advisory committee for the project. At least one representative from each village should be a woman and all the representatives should have at least a standard 7 education. 5 All four villages agreed to elect 3 representatives for the advisory committee, which was later renamed the executive committee. The first meeting of the executive committee took place on 3 This statement did not prove to be entirely true. In reality the project is not a cooperative, though may become one after a few years. Currently, leadership of the project is balanced between the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group via Amiri Saidi, the project manager, and an executive committee of three representatives from each village. 4 It now appears that the average pupae price for the farmers will be closer to 1000 TSH per pupae. 5 All the villages followed these instructions, except for Kwezitu. There, the village government claimed that there was not sufficient time to hold elections before the first scheduled meeting of the advisory committee and as a result chose representatives from among themselves (since no woman was present at the meeting, the woman representative was chosen without consulting her). 32
Page 1 and 2: Butterfly Farming in the East Usamb
Page 3 and 4: Summary This report documents the f
Page 5 and 6: Since the end of walking transects
Page 7 and 8: diapause, some species of butterfly
Page 9 and 10: seems to be rapidly recovering in t
Page 11 and 12: • Charaxes violetta - A medium si
Page 13 and 14: • Pseudacraea boisduvali - Female
Page 15 and 16: • Papilio pelodurus - This specie
Page 17 and 18: sales for the dead stock market wou
Page 19 and 20: seems to be relatively easy to tran
Page 21 and 22: • Sorindeia madagascariensis - Th
Page 23 and 24: Then one piece of shade netting is
Page 25 and 26: 3.1.9 Hanging Traps Hanging traps a
Page 27 and 28: • Collecting Eggs - Removing eggs
Page 29 and 30: • Providing technical assistance,
Page 31: • Since September 2002, the Diplo
Page 35 and 36: frames, has often been of poor qual
Page 37 and 38: so that groups consisting of 15 mem
Page 39 and 40: during the first few months of the

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