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East Africa Battles Deforestation With Butterfly Nets
"I like capturing butterflies, it's fun because I make some money," she says, puffing as she wipes the sweat pearling on her nose after a frantic chase in the forest's sandy trails.
Arabuko Sokoke on the Kenyan coast is known for its rare species of butterflies, which a development project called Kipepeo (butterfly in Swahili) is helping export to exhibits and museums in Europe and North America.
Forest dwellers in neighbouring Tanzania have also benefited from such butterfly farming initatives, which not only increase the local community's economic wealth but helps protect the environment.
"I need the forest to feed the butterflies," Aicha explains.
Only a few years ago, she and most of the 100,000 villagers living around Arabuko Sokoke "had a negative perception of the forest," says Kenyan scientist Maria Fungomeli.
They saw the forest as little more than a refuge for the monkeys and elephants attacking their farms and a hostile growth that should be cut down to harvest timber, says Fungomeli, assistant director at Kipepeo project.
Deforestation is threatening what is the largest block of coastal forest remaining in East Africa as well as the rare animal species it sheltered, such as the golden-rumped elephant shrew.
But what conservationists call "the butterfly effect" has started to pay off, both for Arabuko Sokoke and its inhabitants. Some 800 families now live thanks to the sale of butterflies.
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