Rodrigo Gámez (Director of INBio) (La Nación 10-26-09)
A few days ago, this newspaper published a singular news item entitled: “Psychiatric Hospital Opens Butterfly Garden” (La Nación 10-10-09). Two subtitles that follow state: “Butterfly garden will be a therapeutic option to reduce anxiety and stress” and (the) “Project also stands out as a job alternative for the patients”. Referring then to how the initiative began, it says that the project started a year ago and was organized with the help of biologists and technicians from the INBio (National Institute for Biodiversity).
In a book entitled Life’s Diversity, E. O. Wilson, a brilliant writer and biologist, says that countries have three great kinds of wealth: the economic, the cultural and the biological. The first one is well understood and valued; the second one, somewhat less so, and the third much less so.
Wilson’s dream, like that of very many others of us who are interested in and worry about the present and the future of humanity and of our natural surroundings, is that we humans should succeed in becoming conscious of the value of this latter form of wealth. But let’s return to the news item. Is there any relationship between that decision of the Psychiatric Hospital regarding establishing a butterfly garden, Wilson’s ideas, scientists and environmentalists, and the job of the INBio? Certainly there is, and for various reasons which we will explain below.
CONTACT WITH NATURE
One of them is that inter-action with the natural world affects human beings positively. Contact with that which is natural, direct, or even only visual, constitutes a joy, a delight, a stimulus that in very diverse ways penetrates our brain and is reflected in our social behaviour. For this reason, it is not surprising that, as the quoted article says, “butterflies are part of the therapy against anxiety and stress that rehabilitation patients receive at the National Psychiatric Hospital”. This is in fact the same criterion by which many of us choose our holiday destination.
Then moving on to speak about the aforementioned psychiatric hospital project, but as an alternative source of work for the patients, the article’s author says: “In future it is hoped that patients will also be able to sell these butterflies and other products. In this way, they will get some money and a stable job in order to begin their reinsertion into society”.
Absolutely correct. To breed butterflies is conceptually the same as raising cows, hens or any domesticated animal, as growing coffee, corn or any other crop. It is something that can be done in a sustainable manner, without threatening the existence of the species or altering the environment, generating income and representing a rational form of employment in order to create wealth.
EXTRAORDINARY BIODIVERSITY
All countries possess biodiversity, but our case is something special. Costa Rica’s biodiversity is something really extraordinary. We are among the twenty “mega-diverse” countries on the planet, with a disproportionate number of species in relation to our small territory.
It is true that we are in good part conserving it, but without a doubt we will do it more and better, to the degree that we see the golden opportunity that is presented to us to utilise it even more intelligently, in many different ways, in order to improve our quality of life, as in the case of the Psychiatric Hospital’s butterfly garden.
Let us take up again the case of the tourists who visit us. Ecotourism is another form of economic use of biodiversity, an intelligent, non-destructive form. Our forests, extraordinarily rich in biodiversity, are in fact a tropical version of the Gothic cathedrals that millions of tourists admire in Europe.
They are masterpieces of nature, even scarcer and less accessible to whoever wants to get to know them. And more people now do want to know and appreciate them.
TOURISM AND AWARENESS
Butterflies are in effect an attraction for entertaining and educating both Costa Rican and foreign tourists. Along with toucans, quetzals, monkeys or jaguars, we have made them into icons of our natural wealth. But what is interesting is that we can employ them as an example to illustrate other ways of using this natural capital, if we add greater awareness value to them through more science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.
Let’s look at a particular case of one butterfly, the Morpho, that large butterfly of iridescent blue tones (in Costa Rica we have several species of Morphos). We find them in forests, where it is a most beautiful spectacle to see their hesitant flight. We already can reproduce them easily in butterfly gardens, and they are one of our export products, not only alive, but also in elaborate hand-crafted products. But let’s see what it does when we apply more science, technology and innovation to the appreciation of the Morpho.
It turns out that, as biologists knew, the colour of this butterfly is due not to a pigment, but to a framework of ultra-microscopic blades or light filters that are in the scales of the wings. Upon analysis by specialists in optics, it was found that these micro-blades refracted optically, in the most elaborate and pure way, the length of blue-coloured light that reaches our eyes.
On the basis of this discovery, technologists and innovators from countries who do not have Morphos set out to copy this natural design and now produce, with the greatest of entrepreneurial and economic success, iridescent blue fabrics; paints that do not soil or discolour for buildings, automobiles or household utensils; and, better yet, for screens of electronic devices, with greater luminosity, better colour definition and less energy waste.
And these are only a few of the many other practical applications that we could derive for medicine, agriculture or industry by studying scientifically all the phases of the life cycle of these attractive insects. We could be doing this here in Costa Rica. This challenge was what motivated a small group of us Costa Ricans, now some twenty years ago, to take the decision to create a private, scientific and non-profit association that was the National Institute for Biodiversity (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad), the INBio. We defined as our mission “(…) to create a greater conscientiousness of the value of biodiversity in order to achieve its conservation and to improve man’s quality of life”.
That’s why, returning to the article about the Psychiatric Hospital’s butterfly garden, INBio biologists and technicians are supporting this and other similar initiatives in the educational, industrial, entrepreneurial, scientific and many other fields.
All this is done with that mission that we set for ourselves two decades ago and that today is even more relevant, because our future and the future of life on earth depend on our learning to live in harmony with nature.