Butterfly Road kills

Butterfly Road kills

Nannaj Wild life Sanctuary

Solapur, Maharashtra

With the receding rains in the months of August and September, butterfly activity is boosted in southern India. I always used to visit different places in Western Ghats but this time I decided to visit an entirely different Ecosystem.

To the north of Solapur (about 260 Km from Pune in South-East direction) in the endless grasslands there rests a unique Sanctuary; known as Nannaj Wildlife Sanctuary. The sanctuary is famous for one of the rarest bird in India “The Great Indian Bustard.”

I did not have lot of days to spare so it was quick one-day visit on 11^th September 2007. I didn’t know that this was going to be another 9/11 incidences. In order to gain freedom of traveling and stopping anywhere at will I decided to ride there by Bike. I departed around 6am from Pune and in less than 3 ½ Hrs covering about 260Km; at about 9.30am I was in the vicinity of Nannaj.

Road from Solapur to Nannaj is a pleasant ride. Good road with no ups and downs. You can speed at your will. The roadside was covered with cassia spp., acacia spp. and mimosaceae trees. Along with these indigenous trees there were tree plantations of exotic species like eucalyptus, glyricedia, Australian acacia. In the route I could see few private teak plantations too. There were scanty patches of agriculture, mainly consisting of sugarcane and in few patches onion, potato etc. Some patches were having floriculture. Along the roadside there were variety of herbs and shrubs; dominant among those were leucas ciliata, smithia hirsute, cassia auriculata, commelina forsskalaei. And lastly there were at least 15 different grass species, which I could distinguish but couldn’t identify.

In spite of low rain and hot sun in that region, it houses tremendous biodiversity and I started to get glimpses of that. Hundreds of Common and mottled emigrant were flying around. The grass yellows were beyond the range of count. Common crow, common Mormon, common and crimson rose were lying around in dozens. Along with these lycaenidae members like Pierrots, Ceruleans, Cupids, Babul blues and Grass blues were flying from flower to flower. Other Pieridae members like Albatross, Common Jezebel, Common Gull, Pioneers and Jokers were showing the dominance of Pieridae family in that region.

I might have traveled about 3Km from Solapur towards Nannaj and I saw first victim on the road. It was half dead common rose butterfly lying on the center of the road trying to fly…but jut fluttering!! I stopped my bike and ran towards it in order to rescue that butterfly before any vehicle could crush that. It was a full size common rose butterfly whose abdomen was smashed because of its collision with the fast moving vehicle.

Then I looked around…hundreds of butterflies were flying around and there were about 1-2 speeding four wheelers passing per minute. I started thinking on that and it occurred to me that this might not be the only case. There might be several such cases ahead. I was fully equipped with camera, pen & notepad, binocular, hence I decided to take systematic notes of these road kills and ratio of those with the number of butterflies of each species flying around.

It is exact 15Km from Solapur to Nannaj village. I had already covered 3Km. So I decided to sample road kills by transact method of the remaining distance. Total distance of transact was 12 Km and time was between 10.30am to 11.15am. I decided to travel on my bike with the speed of 20Km/Hr and stop wherever it is necessary to take records. With this methodology I carried out further experiment and got the following

No	Family	Name of the Butterfly	Found dead/ mortally injured	Approx no of butterflies recorded flying
1	Pieridae	Common/mottled Emigrants (Catopsilia pomona & Catopsilia florella )	38	Above 200
2	Pieridae	Grass Yellow (Eurema hecabe)	12	Above 200
3	Pieridae	Pioneer Anaphaeis aurota	2	10-20 sightings
4	Pieridae	Common Gull (Cepora nerissa)	3	10-20 sightings
5	Pieridae	Albatross (Appias albino)	0	10-20 sightings
6	Pieridae	Orange tip (Ixias spp.)	0	5-10 sightings
7	Nymphalidae	Joker	0	20-50 sightings
8	Nymphalidae	Common Crow (Euploea core)	17	50-100 sightings
9	Nymphalidae	Tigers (Danaus spp.)	0	30-50 sightings
10	Nymphalidae	Pansy (lemon/blue/yellow) (Junonia lemonias) (Junonia orithya) (Junonia hierta)	0	50-100 sightings
11	Lycaenidae	Blues	0	Above 100
12	Papilionidae	Common/crimson Rose (Pachliopta aristolochiae) (Pachliopta hector)	24	30-50 sightings
			96

These were really alarming results, particularly in case of “Rose butterflies.” The sighting to kill ratio for them was almost 1:2. Means for every two sightings of rose butterfly flying around, one was getting killed in road accident.

In the entire line transact of just 12 Km I had seen 96 butterfly road kills in less than 1 Hr period. If we average out then it becomes 8 kills/Km. considering the approximate traffic on that road about 90 vehicles an hour, this mortality rate is pretty high.

After this incident I really started thinking on how these kills can be reduced!! Restriction on speeding around sanctuary, public awareness, wire mesh hedge along roads and hedge plantations are some ideas to reduce the kills. But till date I have completely failed in finding any solid solution on this problem. Perhaps more study is necessary before reaching some conclusion and finding solution on the problem.

Pinakin Karve

Proud to be a butterfly chaser

pinakin.karve@gmail.com