Meet Sammilan Shetty, the butterfly-man of Karnataka

Sandhya D'Souza | coastaldigest.com
June 24, 2018

It was a regular Zoology assignment in 2004 that triggered the sudden interest of then student Sammilan Shetty towards butterflies. Fourteen-years since, having quit his fulltime-lectureship post, this 32-year-old has been successfully running Karnataka’s first private butterfly park in coastal district of Dakshina Kannada since 2011.

At the foothills of Western Ghats in Belvai village of Moodbidri taluk, a host of ordinary-looking plants and trees welcome the guests to 'Sammilan Shetty's Butterfly Park'. While walking through the 200 metre stretch of trees like coconut, mango, cashew or curry leaf plants, visitors are asked to delicately examine the top and bottom of these leaves, some of which are nature’s bed for butterfly eggs, larvae, caterpillar, dried shells and so on.

"You don’t need exotic plantation to host butterflies. Regular saplings or even wild plants that you can find in your home backyard would do. But unfortunately, most people uproot them terming it as a weed (unwanted plants). Even my family, was initially reluctant of my passion because I planted them," Shetty says.

Prior to the walk around the butterfly park, the visitors are familiarized with a few names and behaviour-pattern of the butterflies through audio-visual material, so that they can relate the same during their actual encounter with the species in the wild. A 30-minute walk-through this park gives a unique opportunity for the visitors to see the transformation from egg to caterpillar-pupa and the adult butterfly emerging out of it.

While the 'host-plant' is where the butterflies lay their eggs, the male milkweed butterflies suck alkaloid from alkaloid rich plants. "Alkaloids are essential for male milkweed butterflies to attract their female counterparts. Lower the alkaloid, the male butterflies might fail to impress their prospective female-mates," he says.

At this ancestral property spreading over 7.35 acres of semi-forest land, interesting species like, Autumn Leaf (Doleschallia bisaltide), Clipper (Parthenos sylvia),  Tawny Rajah (Charaxes psaphon), Black Rajah (Charaxes solon), Paris Peacock (Papilio paris), Redspot Duke (Dophla evelina), Blue Oakleaf(Kallima horsfieldii), Colour Sergeant (Athyma inara), which are otherwise uncommon, frequent at this open-private conservatory.

For the purpose of the identification of butterflies, Shetty uses The Book of Indian Butterflies by Isaac Kehimkar, whom he considers as his inspiration. Incidentally, the park was also publically opened in 2013 by Isaac - popularly known as the 'Butterfly man of India'.

"Rare butterflies like Blue Nawab (Polyura Schreiber), Orchid Tit (Chliaria othona), Great Evening Brown (Melanitis zitenius), Aberrant Oakblue (Arhopala abseus), Banded Royal (Rachana jalindra) Tamil Oakblue (Arhopala bazaloides) have also been recorded here," Shetty says.  Besides, we have species endemic to Western Ghats like Southern Duffer (Discophora lepida),  Tamil lacewing (Cethosia Nietneri), Malabar Banded Swallowtail( Papilio liomedon), Malabar Banded Peacock (Papilio buddha), a common sight during the season.

Back in 2004, while pursuing his graduation studies for Zoology, Sammilan documented 30 butterflies in the region for his project on the 'Study of local butterflies'. At present the open-house conservatory houses nearly 148 butterflies including rare and indigenous species. This is close to 50 per cent (339) of the species that is found in Western-Ghats. Shetty is particular of keeping the park without closed dome or enclosures, which he says traps them. "We have developed the park by propagating natural greenery with 'native host plants' and nectar plants which attracts butterflies to these parks. We have only created a conducive condition for them and respect the butterfly's freedom to stay or to go," he says.

London based World Book of Records has proposed to honour Shetty in recognition for his conservation of butterflies. Halpe Porus is the latest addition as the 148th butterfly at this park, which incidentally was spotted during course of this interview-walk.

Altogether there are 1,200 species of butterflies in the country, and approximately 320 in Karnataka. "Though the pollination by the butterflies is essential for food chain, no much study is gathered in India over it. Although Indian Foundation for Butterflies (IFB) is leading the way, it may take another 10 years for us to asses if we are truly accommodating the butterflies in our eco system," he says.

While the massive urbanisation and real-estate ventures targeting the secondary-forests, Shetty says, it has led to the decline of wildlife including butterflies due to their habitat loss.

While Maharashtra has taken ‘Blue Mormon’ as its state butterfly in 2015 and Karnataka has declared 'Southern Bird Wing' as its state butterfly in 2017, the butterfly enthusiasts are now batting to have recognition for a national butterfly. Butterfly-conservators feel that the move would not only help in creation of awareness of Butterfly in general, but also in conservation of their population.

The park which is completely funded by the family of Shetty, attracts approximately 800 visitors during the season between June and December. In the process of documenting the butterflies, Shetty has also taken to photography of which he plans to turn into a documentary. "A lot of people have changed the way they look at butterfly, after the educational tour. The idea is to take the message of butterfly conservation and its contribution for crop-cultivation (pollination) to as many people as possible in simple language" he says.

Comments

MK Lobo, Dubai
 - 
Sunday, 24 Jun 2018

Beautiful. Great job by Mr Shetty. Will visit during my next India visit

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News Network
June 5,2020

Bengaluru, Jun 5: An earthquake of magnitude 4.0 on the Richter Scale jolted Karnataka on Friday morning while another with a magnitude of 4.7 was felt in Jharkhand.

The tremors were felt in Hampi (Karnataka) and Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), according to the National Center for Seismology (NCS).

According to NCS, the aftershocks were felt at 6:55 am in both the places today.

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News Network
March 30,2020

Bengaluru, Mar 30: The total number of COVID-19 cases in Karnataka has climbed to 88 on Sunday after five more persons tested positive for the lethal infection.

"Five more COVID-19 cases reported in Karnataka taking positive cases in the state to 88," said the State health department.

Of the five, one is a close contact of an earlier confirmed patient and the others are workers of a pharmaceutical company in Mysuru, from where a person had tested positive, the department said.

The country is under a 21-day lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has infected 1,071 people so far.

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News Network
May 3,2020

Dubai, May 3: Over 150,000 Indians in the UAE, who wish to return home amid the coronavirus lockdown, have applied through the online registration process to the Indian missions here, according to media reports.

The Indian missions in the country last week opened online registration for the expatriates who wish to fly back home after getting stuck in the country amidst the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As of 6 pm on Saturday, we received more than 150,000 registrations, Consul General of India in Dubai Vipul told the Gulf News on Saturday.

A quarter of them want to return to their homeland after losing their jobs, he said.

According to a report in the Khaleej Times on Sunday, about 40 per cent of the applicants who have registered are blue-collared workers and 20 per cent are working professionals.

"Roughly 20 per cent have suffered job losses and about 55 per cent of the total applicants are from Kerala," Neeraj Aggarwal, Consul, Press, Information, Culture was quoted as saying in the report.

Aggarwal said that the figures would change as they are expecting registrations from workers from other states, including Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.

About 10 per cent of the applicants are visit and tourist visa holders who got stranded here due to the ongoing lockdown in India.

India extended the ongoing lockdown by two weeks from May 4 to contain the spread of the coronavirus that has affected nearly 40,000 people in the country.

Aggarwal said that a small number of the applications constitute those from pregnant women and other medical cases.

Since the online registration process was launched, the Consulate's website crashed several times due to the heavy rush of applicants wishing to register to fly back home.

The site has been working fine now though it took a lot of time for it to stabilise in the initial phase due to the heavy traffic, the counsel general said.

He said that the missions here have not yet received any information from the Indian government about the mode of transport of the stranded citizens, the prices of the tickets or how the COVID-19 test results of applicants would be assessed for their journey.

There are high-level discussions going on regarding these things, he said in the report.

Meanwhile, Norka (The Non Resident Keralites Affairs) said it has received a total of 398,000 applications from Keralites across the globe who wish to return home.

"Of which, the highest numbers are from the UAE. At least 175,423 applicants have signed up from the UAE," Norka said in an official statement on Saturday.

It also received 54,305 registrations from Saudi Arabia, 2,437 from the UK, 2,255 from the US, and 1,958 from Ukraine from those who wish to return to India, the Khaleej Times reported.

The coronavirus has infected 13,599 people and claimed 119 lives in the UAE, the Ministry of Health and Prevention said on Saturday.

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