Butterfly breeders upset by proposal

Butterfly breeders decry a proposed rule that would ban interstate butterfly shipments except for research.

By LEONORA LaPETER
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 16, 2002

[Times photo: Fred Victorin]

Dale McClung of Florida Monarch Butterfly Farm in St. Petersburg holds two monarchs. He breeds butterflies in his back yard, and about 70 per cent of the ones he sells are monarchs, the large percentage of those to out-of-state buyers.

He plucks monarch butterflies off the inside of a mesh tent, folds their black and orange wings together and places them in small envelopes. He needs a dozen for a Miami woman who wants to give them as a birthday present to her mother-in-law for her pool enclosure.

McClung is a backyard butterfly breeder -- an urban farmer of sorts -- who sold $65,000 in live butterflies last year. But soon, McClung fears, he could be put out of business by the federal government.

A proposed federal regulation would ban the shipping of monarch butterflies across state lines except for research or testing purposes. It is motivated by a desire to protect the endangered milkweed, which caterpillars use for food.

"It's a bad regulation," said McClung, a 56-year-old with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and large wire-rimmed glasses who used to sell advertising before he turned to butterfly breeding in 1997.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally said the milkweed is endangered in Arizona and Oklahoma and needs protection. Now, they are simply saying that the caterpillars are pests.

"They're plant pests in their larval stage, and we regulate plant pests," said Meghan Thomas, a spokesperson for the USDA.

The proposed regulation has the potential to decimate Florida's butterfly breeding industry, the largest in the country with 27 breeders. There are 131 breeders in the United States registered with the International Butterfly Breeders Association.

The regulation also comes at a time when more than 250-million monarch butterflies were killed by a winter storm in their wintering grounds in Mexico.

McClung sold 10,736 butterflies last year through his company, Florida Monarch Butterfly Farm. He said about 70 percent of the butterflies he sells are monarchs, and 80 percent of his business is out of state.

He and other breeders around the country are fighting the regulation with a letter-writing campaign questioning the validity of it. The state of Florida does not regulate butterfly breeders, although breeders in other states must obtain a permit to send nine butterfly species here.

"As it's proposed, it would pretty well put me out of business," said Bethany Homeyer Reese, a butterfly breeder in Swinney Switch, Texas, who sold 25,000 butterflies from her 4-acre ranch last year. "And what are we protecting? Weeds. Weeds."

The USDA closed its public comment period for the proposed rule Feb. 6. It will use some of the more than 1,300 comments received from breeders, schoolchildren and others to rewrite the proposal.

As it is now written, the regulation could affect companies that provide butterfly growing kits to schoolchildren, because they would only be allowed to ship their monarch kits inside the state. Conversely, children in states where these companies do not operate would not be able to release the butterflies from these kits into the wild.

"I think in the long run, since there is no science supporting any of this ... I don't think they will adopt this proposal," said Chip Taylor, an insect ecologist at the University of Kansas and director of Monarch Watch, a nonprofit organization that sells the monarch caterpillar kits to schoolchildren to fund its monarch tagging program. "There really isn't anything substantive in terms of evidence on this issue."

But Jeffrey Glassberg, president of the North American Butterfly Association in Morristown, N.J., for eight years, thinks the USDA needs to regulate even more species of butterflies. He says butterflies can carry parasites, particularly those bred in a confined space, that can spread to native butterflies where they are released.

And though scientists don't know the effect of releasing so many farm-bred butterflies into the wild, that isn't a reason to simply go ahead and allow it, he said.

"All those people who say there's nothing wrong with it are people who have personal gain from it," Glassberg said. "That speaks volumes about it."

The International Butterfly Breeders Association, facing complaints that their butterfly shipments are hampering scientific migration studies, will begin to implement a voluntary tagging operation in April.

The breeders are being asked to place the small yellow tags, which will list a phone number, on the underside of the butterfly's wing. But Ed Reinertsen, a breeder from Richardson, Texas, who organized the program, points out that it will be voluntary. McClung thinks it is a useless effort but he will comply with it.

"You're sending them out in the haphazard hope that some researcher with binoculars is going to go out and say, "Oh, there's a butterfly, oh it's got a tag. Oh.' "

Maryanne Freytag, who bought 30 butterflies from McClung for her daughter's wedding at the Florida Botanical Gardens in Largo in January, knows nothing of the controversy surrounding butterflies. She said she can understand why the tags might be necessary, but she doesn't think she would have wanted them that way.

"It wouldn't have been as natural-like, but I can understand where they're coming from to see how far they would go, but I don't think I'd want to do it," she said.

A leader in breeders

Florida has 27 butterfly breeders, the most in the nation.

1. Florida 27

2. Texas 20

3. California 13

4. Pennsylvania 9

5. Ohio 7

-- Source: International Butterfly Breeders Association

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