It’s hard to imagine a more vigorous advocate for the endangered monarch butterfly than Rick Mikula.
Known around Hazleton as the butterfly guy, Mikula has spent his adult life teaching about butterflies to school children, prison inmates and gardeners.
That’s just the kind of outreach that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife called for on Dec. 10 when proposing to list the orange-and-black monarch as a threatened species.
“Everyone can play a role in saving the monarch butterfly,” the service said when listing actions that local, state and tribal governments, farmers, ranchers and homeowners can take, such as planting milkweed, the food of monarch larvae. “Whether you have a few feet on your apartment balcony, a yard in need of landscaping or several acres, you can make a difference.”
Mikula spread the same message, not just in talks, but in a series of books, starting with “Garden Butterflies of North America,” in 1997.
The move to declare the monarch endangered, however, endangers Mikula’s ability to bring monarchs to the public as a butterfly breeder. His Hole in Hand Butterfly Farm raises monarchs and other species to release at weddings and display in exhibits such as butterfly zoos, a practice that could end.
When a species is protected, the Endangered Species Act makes it illegal to take, transport sell, transport or ship.
The Wildlife Service is thinking of allowing people to raise up to 250 monarchs a year. To raise more, breeders would need a permit. The service also wants to forbid anyone from handling monarchs clustered in their winter habitats, because they’re vulnerable to disease.
Worries about disease led to concerns about monarch breeding.
“These concerns include the risk that rearing monarchs in captivity can promote an increase in parasites, which can then be spread to wild monarchs when they are released,” the Xerces Society says. A joint statement that the Xerces Society released in 2015 with other researchers said captive breeding can dilute genetic diversity and releasing captive-raised butterflies can undermine studies of how wild monarchs move.
“What gets under my skin,” Mikula said, “they claim we’re releasing diseased butterflies.”
Butterfly breeders already are regulated and require permits to ship across state lines, he said, and if a butterfly has a parasite, it will only live a few days after being released. Breeders whose butterflies develop diseases will be out of business, Mikula said.
Twenty-five years ago, he and his brother Jack Mikula, started International Butterfly Breeders Association that teaches breeders through weekly meetings online how to avoid disease. In one lesson, they learn to disinfect eggs by putting the eggs in a thin cloth, dipping them in a solution of bleach and rinsing.
“We started the organization to patrol and educate on how to raise healthy butterflies,” Mikula said of the group that has about 200 members.
Even the Xerces Society says there are benefits to small breeding projects such as supplying butterflies for scientific research. A child watching a larvae in a jar become a butterfly can become a lifelong advocate for monarchs.
Regardless of the minor harm that captive monarchs might play, the Wildlife Service and other researchers agree that the main threats to the species are destruction of habitat like milkweed and the sites where monarchs spend winters; pesticides and herbicides that kill milkweed.
Climate change, too, contributes to the demise. In winter, monarchs need forests that are cool enough to slow their metabolism without freezing them. Climate change also might lead milkweed to migrate, extending the travel distances of monarchs.
Monarchs east of the Mississippi River go to Mexico for the winter, whereas monarchs in the West spend the winter in Coastal California where the Wildlife Service proposes preserving more than 4,000 acres of their habitat.
While Eastern monarchs have sustained 80% losses since the 1980s, the service says losses among the Western monarchs approach 95% and that group faces greater chance of extinction.
Mikula said he has had conservation in mind since he decided to call his farm Hole in Hand.
“The name,” he said, “comes from indigenous people who say if you go hunting or gathering, take what you need and let the rest slip through your hand, and it will be that way for all times.”
Source: Berkshire mont