Women butterfly farmers living near the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest in Kilifi demonstrate how they catch the butterflies in the forest for farming. Farming butterflies is a good example of how local communities can be facilitated in conserving forests. PHOTO | BRIAN OKINDA | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Butterfly farming is an ideal alternative source of income as it offers a good livelihood for those living near the forest. It also needs little investment.
The butterflies enter the traps, which are usually made of a meshed material and are confined therein, after which the women collect their harvest and take it home where they have built special structures for rearing them.
After hatching, the larvae are left to feed on the plants until they develop into pupae, which the farmers sell at the Kipepeo Butterfly Project Centre in Mombasa, which is managed by the East African Natural History Society together with the National Museums of Kenya.
Hussein Aden, a research scientist at National Museums of Kenya, who is also the project manager at the Kipepeo Butterfly Project, notes that the farming has been a key incentive in boosting the incomes of the largely underprivileged communities living on the fringes of the forest.
For Jamila Rashid, a mother of three from Mida near Gede in Kilifi County, harvesting and selling firewood and charcoal from the vast Arabuko-Sokoke Forest used to be the main source of livelihood.
Together with other women in the village, she would spend hours in the forest gathering firewood and burning charcoal for sale, an exercise which often put them at loggerheads with the Kenya Forest Service (KFS) officials.
