The Butterfly Effect

A Blue Tiger Butterfly

Butterfly is the last word comes in mind while walking through the congested roads of Sodhpur, an industrial suburb near Kolkata at North 24 Pargana. The loud honking of trucks, narrow, stinking lanes and the polluted air, rather denies every existence of greenery or nature. But once enter the house of Somnath Pal Das the feeling evaporates instantly. The 35 year old power plant engineer has transformed the 600 Sq Ft free space in front of his house into a garden, where 58 species of butterflies live as permanent residents.

Along with the ‘Butterfly Garden’, Somnath runs a Caterpillar Rescue and Rehab Centre and a consultancy that provides guidance to the nature lovers to establish butterfly garden on the heart of the polluted city, which is a wonder in itself.  Somnath is not the only one though, 35 year old Arjan Basu Roy, a printing engineer and the founder of Nature Mates-Nature Club NGO has been doing the same for last 4 years in different parts of West Bengal.

Being extremely pollution sensitive, butterflies have died out from most part of the city, mostly due to collision with high speed cars and radio waves generated by mobile towers. Even in rural areas their numbers are fast decreasing for extensive use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. And to address this problem few nature lovers in the city have shown a unique solution for these insects to grow and live by making natural ‘pockets’ and named them as Butterfly Garden.

Somnath with a Common Mormon Butterfly

The conventional idea of gardening simply doesn’t work when it comes to butterfly garden. It is not about stuffing ornamental plants to enhance the beauty of the garden whimsically. Rather the importance is given to the plants that produce more nectar and host butterflies. “The main aim is to create a proper ecosystem, and once that is properly established, butterflies would come automatically and enhance the beauty of your garden free of coast”, Somnath Says humorously.

Infact, Somnath has a very interesting story to share about the migration of butterflies in his garden. One day, while in office, his wife called and described about the sighting of a unique butterfly she had never seen. Hearing the description Somnath asked her to take some picture and mail him at once. He was stunt by the photos he received in next few hours. “It was a Gaudy Baron, a species of North Bengal and extremely hard, if not impossible, to find in Kolkata. And surprisingly it stayed for few days in the garden”, Somnath says. And after few months, after the first one left, two more female Goudy Barons came to his garden and spent few days.

Once enter the tiny garden of Somnath- the serene green sight with unusual number of butterflies flattering around- it becomes clear why those Gaudy Barons spent days here. Walking through the earthen path in the garden Somnath says “I have hardly spent Rs 600 on my garden; everything is here either collected or bought in extremely low coast.” And it was a truth; the plants that made the bushes are all locals gathered from wild bushes or by the sides of rail tracks, and to form a ‘natural ecosystem’ expensive pesticides or fertilizer have no use here

Common Leopard Butterfly 

At the end of the garden the 8ft/10ft room that Somnath calls his ‘Lab’- where he breeds and raises butterfly pupa- is equally inexpensive. Walls are covered with metal racks, most of them containing rows of plastic boxes having larvae and pupas of butterflies in them; others are stacked with books and files. Where at a corner, between two metal racks a dozen of saplings are kept, roots are wrapped with polythene with mound of soil in them, waiting to be planted or distributed.

Sitting on a wooden chair, in his lab, at one side of a wooden desk Somnath explains “Planting random decorative plants would not help at all.”  The requirement of plants depends on the research, before making a garden, on the native butterflies and their host plants. Arjan Basu Roy, who has created butterfly garden named Banabitan at Salt Lake Central Park, agrees with Somnath when he says “The proper placement of plant is equally important. There are few plants in which butterflies lay eggs and there are plants that provide food for them. So, it is absolutely necessary to plant all the variety to help these beauties complete their life cycle.”

And, in order to do so, the native plants are the only option. “The butterflies that would come to live in the newly established garden would be local and they wouldn’t do so if the plants are alien in nature. So, these plants should be given the utmost importance”, Somnath explains, by pointing at the soil moulded plants kept at the corner of the room, “And it can be done in any amount of space, be it is a three Sq Foot balcony or a one acre land”, says he.

Rescued Plain Tiger Caterpillar's Pupa

The rushed entrance of Somnath’s 5 year old son in the lab, for a sudden tweet from the garden,  put an abrupt halt to the conversation. “Baba! The Rackettail Drondo has returned!”, the alarming voice of the of the child made Somnath rush out of the room to the garden to shoo away the zed black bird, slightly bigger than a sparrow. “This one ate all the caterpillars of Blue Tiger (a specie of butterfly) few days back”, Somnath says worriedly, on his way back to the lab, in a grumpy expression.

“See! This is the beauty of the butterfly garden! Being at the bottom of the food chain it attracts many predators. And in this way you are attracting many other insects, animal and birds”, Somnath informs. Who believes this is the best way to conserve not only butterflies, but also many other insects and birds. Currently there are 23 species of spider and 10 different species of birds in his garden. “95% of total wild life fund of the country is mainly used for large animals like tiger, rino and elephant. But no one thinks about the grassroots level conservation”, informs Arjan, who hopes to turn Kolkata in to ‘city of butterflies’ by 2015.

Even though there are butterfly gardens in many other countries around the world but all of them either into cage or glass doom. But Nature lovers like Arjan and Somnath promotes the idea of open air butterfly gardening. Even though the death of each insect by predators hurts them like anything, they seem to sustain the pain for a greater good. “A butterfly garden should be a complete biodiversity garden”, informs Arjan.

The grassroots level conservation, according to Arjan, is the best way to protect the wildlife. In this system any person can directly contribute to the conservation. It is hardly possible for any urban person to go to Sundarban and work for the conservation of the tiger, “But here all you have to do is to implant few specific plants and look after them”, says he.

However, along with animals butterfly garden helps to conserve the local variety of plants, having high medicinal value, as well, which is also of utmost importance. The native plants are fast disappearing due to unscientific gardening, rapid urbanization and plantation of ornamental foreign plants that has nothing to do with the local ecosystem. “The ornamental plants specially the foreign plants might increase the visual pleasure but in a way it hampers the local ecosystem. Being a foreign plant no local insect would live or breed in it, and so the biodiversity that is suppose to grow surrounding the plant would not take place.

Other than wildlife conservation, butterfly garden has endless other positive dimensions. Being a master pollinator, butterflies helps the plants to spread their seeds thus reproduce. Moreover, butterflies create an immense positive effect of human psyche, according to Somnath, it releases stress for the adult and increases intelligence among the children. “My 5 year old boy can tell you more than 30 scientific names of birds and butterflies”, informs he, and “it has been only possible due to the garden.”  More of it, butterflies are extremely pollution sensitive and acts as a sensor of pollution. It the butterflies are living in a place, it can be believed blindly, it is pollution free.

The Gaudy Baron came to Somnath's garden

Since 2009 West Bengal Forest Department has appreciated all the positive impact of butterfly garden and as a result they have created a Butterfly Garden on 10 acres of land at Eden garden from March this year with the help of Arjan. “A butterfly garden is a biodiversity garden. And spreading the bio diversity is one of the prime aims of forest department”, informs Saurabh Chaudhuri, The Conservator of Forest, Parks, Garden Circle, Forest Department, Government of west Bengal.

And not only the forest department but various schools and colleges also have taken the initiative of establishing butterfly garden like St. John’s Diocesan School, Bethune College, Presidency College etc.

Likewise 19 year old Manas Sarkar has been enjoying all these benefits for last two years. “It acts as a source of mental peace for me”, says Manas, a B A first year student, a owner of 750 sq ft Butterfly garden. Two years ago who came to know about butterfly garden and his passion for wildlife photography dragged him toward the hobby.

That reminds Somnath, the Butterfly garden maker, the incident of Alipore Zoological Garden and who didn’t know anything about butterflies before that. One chilli December morning Somnath went to Alipore zoo to explore his brand new Sony SLR camera. At an abandoned and ill maintained corner, in the zoo, he found hundreds of butterflies on a heap of garbage. Excited Somnath finished the memory card within an hour and returned to the spot next week. But the “place was cleared and visitors of the zoo were picnicking”, and he couldn’t find a single butterfly that day.  The fates of those poor homeless insects touched him so sorry that he vowed to give them a proper home in his own house.

 And he has been living up to his words without a slightest exception.