Monarch butterflies are in trouble. Franklin Farms are trying to turn that around. Video / Alex Robertson
“Every day I wake up with a smile on my face – who else can say they’re a butterfly farmer?” Alan Franklin of Franklin Farms and Butterfly House in Waimauku, north of Auckland thinks he has the best job in the world.
He says that they’ve always had butterflies on their sunflower farm but have turned to raising the insects when his son, Luke and daughter-in-law Jasmine took over the farm and came up with the idea of a butterfly house.
“We’ve had about 60-odd thousand butterflies that we’ve raised on the farm,” Franklin said. The good results are the product of careful management, growing the host plants, Swan plants, in shade houses to protect larvae and caterpillars from predators, mainly wasps.
Monarch butterflies are great to get up close to. Photo / Alex Robertson
Franklin said that he’s hoping that with a good injection of big numbers of butterflies they will have a better chance of survival.
“The Botanic Gardens is a fantastic venue,” he said of the release of 1400 of the monarchs, “they have lots of space and lots of flowers and hopefully they’re going to fly to everybody’s homes in Auckland.”
Jack Hobbs manager to the Botanic Gardens is just as happy as Franklin.
“What Franklin Farm are doing is aligned with what we do here,” Hobbs said at the release. “We do a lot of conservation work, particularly plants. Of course, there’s an association between plants and butterflies so it’s a natural association to have them here.
“We’re doing what we can to protect monarchs. They’re in big trouble.”
Hundreds turned out for the butterfly release. Photo / Alex Robertson
Jacqui Knight founder of the Moth and Butterfly Trust NZ said that butterflies in general were important and pollinators.
“And they inspire people because people can get up close to them and see metamorphosis close up and also the butterfly’s biology,” she said.
“We have over 1800 moths in New Zealand and 93% of our butterflies and moths are only found in New Zealand. We (are mostly involved) in education because people in New Zealand don’t even know that we have some amazing NZ butterflies.”
The butterflies are tagged to try and find out more of their distribution and life processes. Photo / Alex Robertson
Knight said that they had started a programme to reintroduce the red admiral butterfly to Auckland and that they were also encouraging to look out for tagged Monarch butterflies.
“Right now we’re tracking tagged monarch butterflies to find out what’s happening with them,” she said.
Monarch butterflies are endangered due to predators. Photo / Alex Robertson
Franklin explains that tagging is a way of trying to understand where the butterflies are distributing themselves so that we have a better understanding of their life process and that have a better chance of protecting them.
And he encourages people to go and visit the farm.
“There’s a small fee to get in which goes towards growing butterflies,” Franklin said. “It’s quite an expensive exercise. We have quite a few staff and building the infrastructure to grow that many butterflies is quite expensive.”
1400 butterflies were collected by hand and put into special enclosures for transportation to the Botanic Gardens. Photo / Alex Robertson
And with no external funding the Franklins are trying to make it work financially.
“I was up at half past six this morning collecting butterflies. It took us many hours and several of us to be able to collect 1400 butterflies. We had to count them one at a time – on your finger picking them up and putting them into the enclosures,” Franklin said with a huge smile on his face.
