The Art of Conservation and the Butterfly

Pipevine Swallowtail by Bob Moul

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I’m living in Austin, Texas and was invited on a road

trip to see the gulf coast by my friend Deb. I had read

that south Texas has approximately 600 species of

butterflies. A trip south for me meant not only a

chance to see the coast, but a chance to see butterfly

country. Mission, Texas is home to the North

American Butterfly Association’s (NABA) Inter-

national Butterfly Park. Seeing that I was close to

Mission, I took a day trip from South Padre Island

to the Butterfly Park. The drive was a little over an

hour.

After arriving in Mission, I stepped out of the car and

noticed the sweet smells mingling in the air, and the

play of light on the bushes, trees and grasses. Butter-

flies fluttered amongst the growth. I stepped into the

house that serves as the center’s hub and paid my

minimal $5.00 entrance fee. I walked amongst the

flowering trees and bushes that lined the paths and

read the ID tags for the flora and fauna as butterflies

touched down on flowers, then flew away. I walked

the breadth of the park and then along the wooded

edge.

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It was a windy day in late March. The best time to

see butterflies is when there is little to no wind. I

ran into a man with binoculars and we compared

notes on what butterflies we had seen so far despite

the wind. We had both spotted a couple of Pipevine

Swallowtails and Red Bordered Pixies. Of the four

people meandering in the park, it turned out that I

had run into Jeffery Glassberg the founder and

president of NABA.

Jeffrey, an adjunct professor at Rice University,

claimed that Mission is the best location in North

America for butterfly watching. He was a

molecular biologist before becoming an ecology

and evolutionary biologist.

His goal for the Butterfly Park is to make it a field

station for Rice University. It will also serve as an

educational outreach center. People come from

Canada, England, Australia, France, and Germany

specifically for NABA. These very same people

travel to South America and Cuba as well to pursue

butterfly watching or 'butterflying' as it is known.

“You can see more varieties of butterflies here in a

day than anywhere else,” Jeffrey tells me.

Red Bordered Pixie by Richard Crook

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Although the butterfly is a model system for cellular

development from egg to adult, known as metamor-

phosis, the butterfly's importance for the environment

is pollination. For instance the native Verbana plant’s

pollination is done through the butterfly. Thus the

butterfly is linked to the habitat through specific

plants. It is his belief that an area needs “native things,

otherwise there is no reality in the area.”

One of the ongoing, long term projects for NABA is

revegetation. The health of the environment can be

monitored through revegetation. The diversity of an

area can be measured through the butterfly, since the

butterfly population will tell you how successful the

revegetation process has been.

Jeffrey sees butterflying as a way to bring people

into the environmental movement. “If you conserve

a habitat for a butterfly, you are conserving it for

everything. You can save a piece of the world.”

Conserving and revegetation is a growing move-

ment that is building momentum.

Jeffrey Glassberg by Susan Doheny


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Butterflying is growing in popularity also. Birding,

which preceded the popularity of butterflying,

used to be the domain of collectors and taxono-

mists. For instance, before 1900 birds were

categorized by Audubon. Gradually birding became

a popular past time that could be done with

binoculars and cameras. These methods of observa-

tion have opened up to butterflying as well.

The future plans for Mission’s Butterfly Park is to

conduct some earthwork in order to build

different topography. The future gardens will be more

formal. An open building will also be added to the

site. The controversial wall between the US and

Mexico will not be on their property, rather, it will

be three quarters of a mile away.

How is it that a professor has come to be the steward

of property that he revegetates, reshapes, opens up to

field study for all to enjoy and observe the majestic

butterfly? Aside from authoring prominent field

guides to butterflies he’s patented a DNA finger-

printing method for Lifeco in an earlier career.

Humans are attracted to creatures of exquisite

beauty, and the butterfly is such a creature.

The process of conserving land, revegetating to

attract butterflies will in turn lure people into nature

to observe the wondrous butterfly.

Jeffrey Glassberg is the author of the Butterflies through

Binoculars field guide series.

Butterflies through Binoculars: The East,

Butterflies through Binoculars: The West, and

A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and

Central America

The Art of the Butterfly #5 -- Rob Craigie

Below are Rob Craigie's Butterflies from
A Painting Collection, 2007 and 2008
Volume 1, 2008. All images are oil
paint on sized paper.


Butterfly #11



Butterfly #37


Butterfly #16

The Sign of the Butterfly in Art

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

When physical movement is lost, the imagination

takes flight traversing the past and the present.

Jean Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief of Elle, had

a cardio vascular stroke which left him paralyzed from

head to toe. His diagnosis was “locked in syndrome.”

The only movement he had was the ability to blink his

left eye. Through the process of blinking to the letters

recited by a transcriber, he was able to narrate his book

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s book was made into a film in 2007 by director

Julian Schnabel. The film considers the limitations of

the boundary of our skin and the impulse to

communicate beyond those limitations. Sophocles

notion of the butterfly as Psyche or soul is rendered

nearly tangible in this film. Bauby, and then Schnabel,

address the strength of the mind and the

power of the imagination.

We see images of fluttering butterflies only once in the

film. Yet time and again we feel the essence of the

creature through representation of weightlessness,

freedom and hope. These sensations succinctly

counteract being pulled under water, sinking while

confined within the physical limitations of the diving bell.

Bauby, whose story had become popular in Europe, had

turned a negative event into something positive. It has

come to personify a transcendence and power of

consciousness, all of which is a challenge to depict in

film, yet has been successfully accomplished.

Schnabel won best director of the year at the Cannes Film

Festival. The film was nominated in several categories at

the 80^th Academy Awards. Ronald Harwood won the Adapted

Screenplay category at the British Academy of Film &

Television Arts in 2007. The film garnered two Golden Globe

awards.