Preserving Costa Rica, Breeding By Example
| By Britton Jacob-Schram | |
Perhaps everyone should have the sexual prowess of the morpho butterfly.
As Mauricio Jiménez, a guide at Jaco’s eco-project Neofauna will attest, a mating pair of blue morpho butterflies will stay in the same sexual position for a full 24 hours.
The stunning blue morpho, Morpho helenor, Mr Jimenez begins, as he plucks one from the air holding it delicately between his forefingers, revealing its camouflaging owl-eye pattern for the tour, has turned into one of the national symbols of Costa Rica. Though probably more so for its trademark indigo wings than for its mating rituals.
For Neofauna park-owner and biologist Luis Angel Fonseca, reproducing butterflies was the start of a conservation effort which would turn a tiny trans-Atlantic cocoon trade into a butterfly garden, serpentarium and full-blown frog breeding program.
“This all started about 20 years ago,” says Luis of Neofauna, “it was just a butterfly farm around 1990 or so, with small exports to England”, to a butterfly house in London, and to one of the first people to start importing cocoons from Costa Rica, Ian Wallace.
Nowadays, cocoons line a glass cabinet in a room set off from the butterfly gardens; thin plastic cases containing butterfly eggs are constantly being tended to, ensuring the would-be-butterflies inside don’t fall prey to ants, rain, or menacing parasitizing flies.
“I decided to build this project because it’s very important to reproduce species in danger of extinction,” said Luis, who also works closely with a hunter-turned-conservationist Alvaro Otoya and the man’s jaguar conservation program in Rio Cuarto de Grecia, near the Poas volcano. Of that effort, says Luis, jaguar cubs are rescued “usually from adults that have been killed by farmers because the jaguars have killed their cattle, dogs, or horses”.
Profits from Neofauna’s butterfly and frog breeding programs also contribute to the jaguar aid.
“For the first three years, I worked completely alone. I did everything by myself and it was a lot,” said Luis of establishing Neofauna about four years ago.
“Now we’ve grown a little,” he says of the project’s guides like Mauricio Jiménez, who is studying biology at the university in Puntarenas and who considers Luis his mentor.
“I train every guide and I spend two or three months with each one: I give them all the literature and all the explanations. The idea is to give the most educational and most informative tour,” he continues.
Informative they are, says Hawaiian tourist Miko Parker who decided to tour Neofauna for a deeper understanding of the local fauna while she was in Costa Rica. “It’s incredible how much you learn from the guide,” she said after having one of the serpentarium’s snakes woven around her arm. “I was really surprised at how much Mauricio explains.”
The hour-guided tours actually begin with the 10,000-square-foot butterfly and frog houses, where paths wind around native plants landscaped in especially for the butterflies.
As Mauricio Jiménez, a guide at Jaco’s eco-project Neofauna will attest, a mating pair of blue morpho butterflies will stay in the same sexual position for a full 24 hours.
The stunning blue morpho, Morpho helenor, Mr Jimenez begins, as he plucks one from the air holding it delicately between his forefingers, revealing its camouflaging owl-eye pattern for the tour, has turned into one of the national symbols of Costa Rica. Though probably more so for its trademark indigo wings than for its mating rituals.
For Neofauna park-owner and biologist Luis Angel Fonseca, reproducing butterflies was the start of a conservation effort which would turn a tiny trans-Atlantic cocoon trade into a butterfly garden, serpentarium and full-blown frog breeding program.
“This all started about 20 years ago,” says Luis of Neofauna, “it was just a butterfly farm around 1990 or so, with small exports to England”, to a butterfly house in London, and to one of the first people to start importing cocoons from Costa Rica, Ian Wallace.
Nowadays, cocoons line a glass cabinet in a room set off from the butterfly gardens; thin plastic cases containing butterfly eggs are constantly being tended to, ensuring the would-be-butterflies inside don’t fall prey to ants, rain, or menacing parasitizing flies.
“I decided to build this project because it’s very important to reproduce species in danger of extinction,” said Luis, who also works closely with a hunter-turned-conservationist Alvaro Otoya and the man’s jaguar conservation program in Rio Cuarto de Grecia, near the Poas volcano. Of that effort, says Luis, jaguar cubs are rescued “usually from adults that have been killed by farmers because the jaguars have killed their cattle, dogs, or horses”.
Profits from Neofauna’s butterfly and frog breeding programs also contribute to the jaguar aid.
“For the first three years, I worked completely alone. I did everything by myself and it was a lot,” said Luis of establishing Neofauna about four years ago.
“Now we’ve grown a little,” he says of the project’s guides like Mauricio Jiménez, who is studying biology at the university in Puntarenas and who considers Luis his mentor.
“I train every guide and I spend two or three months with each one: I give them all the literature and all the explanations. The idea is to give the most educational and most informative tour,” he continues.
Informative they are, says Hawaiian tourist Miko Parker who decided to tour Neofauna for a deeper understanding of the local fauna while she was in Costa Rica. “It’s incredible how much you learn from the guide,” she said after having one of the serpentarium’s snakes woven around her arm. “I was really surprised at how much Mauricio explains.”
The hour-guided tours actually begin with the 10,000-square-foot butterfly and frog houses, where paths wind around native plants landscaped in especially for the butterflies.
| © Britton Jacob-Schram | |
| | |
“They need three different host plants to reproduce, for where the butterflies lay their eggs and for where the caterpillars and adults feed,” says Mauricio during a tour. More than 15 per cent of the world’s butterflies are found in Costa Rica — of those “some 13,000 species in the country, only about 1650 are diurnal. All the others are nocturnal.” Yet, as he explains this factoid his ears perk. Mauricio motions to shush the group, guiding the tourists toward a noise somewhat akin to the arrhythmic hum of a cicada.
Now on his haunches, Mauricio is ferreting through some of butterflies’ host plants, moving aside obstructing leaves and revealing a brilliant swatch of color through the branches. “It’s a blue jeans,” he says, pointing to a tiny fire engine-red and blue frog erupting in an oddly imposing sound — especially for the frog’s diminutive size.
The strawberry poison-dart frog or blue jeans frog, Dendrobates pumilio, (pictured above) gets its common name from the demarcating blue line beginning at its hipline. It’s endemic to Costa Rica and like the morpho butterfly, explains Mauricio, has become a symbol of the country’s battle for ecological conservation. Costa Rica, he adds, boasts one of the highest populations of blue jeans in the world.
“All the poison dart frogs are territorial, the blue jeans will fight very hard for their territory,” he says. Frogs mix the toxicity from the fire ants they eat with some of their own, creating a deadly combination; and of all the country’s poison dart frogs — so named because certain indigenous tribes of Central and South America would coat the tips of their arrows with the frog’s toxins in hunting or warfare — the yellow-banded poison dart frog, Dendrobates leucomelas, (below) is the most toxic.
“The striped poison dart frog can kill three to five people with the poison of one,” says Mauricio, of the frog’s potent neurotoxin. “The poison can affect you that day or the next day or even two days later. There is no anti-venom. So, it’s just death — but a natural way to die, usually by heart attack or respiratory problems.”
Currently, Neofauna’s breeding program is working with about 25 of this particular species.
One of their biggest threats, he continues, is us: “Frogs breathe through their skin and are extremely sensitive to change of temperature or humidity”. For this reason, global climate change has become one of the greatest challenges to their survival.
According to Luis, the park’s current focus is on the frog-breeding program, especially species like the red-eyed leaf frog, Agalychnis callidryas. Neofauna currently has five males and two females from this species, and even has success breeding them during the dry season using an irrigation system.
Currently their breeding program sends three different poison dart species and five leaf and tree frog species — all bred in captivity — to the Caribbean side of the country.
Whether by local liberation or shipping east-for-release, Neofauna’s breeding program is monitored on both sides of the country by officials from the Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE).
“It’s a small project, but it’s a very important project,” stresses Luis, “because we are working alone. No one supports us. The only people that help us are the tourists.
“We want to grow, we must grow.”
Neofauna is open 7am to 5pm seven days a week, and is located about one km north of Jacó, at the turnoff to Pueblo Nuevo. The cost is $10 for Costa Rican residents and $15 for non-residents. For more information, call: 2.643.1904
