Sumatran Butterflies

Again Gita Persada Butterfly Park was covered on magazine. This time it was covered by Garuda's Flight Magazine. If you happened to be flown with Garuda Air Line be sure to check their flight magazine from page 104 to 114 both for english and bahasa indonesia articles. It was published on May 2009 Edition.

About a month ago there were two journalist from Indonesian edition of Reader's Digest. They were on assignment to cover a story about Gita Persada Butterfly Park founder, Dr. Herawati Soekardi and about the park it self.

One month after that the article published on Indonesia Reader's Digest March Edition. It's on page 95 to 100.

This yellow gorgon or Sickle wing, is one special Papilionid. The latin for yellow gorgon is Maendrusa payeni or Dabasa payeni. This Papilionid's brown mimicking the Nymphalid is quite rare in this family. The gorgon found sipping on Air Mata Pengantin Flower (This flower direct translation literally means Bride's Tears Flower).

We update some spesies from Lycaenidae family. This update includes:
1. Drupadia ravindra (common posy)
2. Pratapa deva (white royal)
3. Remelana jangala (chocolate royal)
4. Zizina otis (lesser grass blue)
5. Deudorix epirjabas (hairy line blue)
6. Everes lacturnus (indian cupid)
7. Loxura atymnus (yamfly)

For pictures and some behavioral notes please check the Lycaenidae section.

Gita Persada Butterfly Park has built a new tree house. This tree house attached on a big candle nut tree. Made from bamboo, this tree house will be the new addition for the eco-tourism package in lampung. We plan to build some more of these tree houses in the next two years to accommodate more tourists. 

The rate for this tree house is US$ 20 per day for two including free breakfast and dinner.

Again, we visited the Bukit Barisan Selatan. We were awed by the biodiversity richness there. For this spirit we visited this national park again. This time we surveyed the potential places around the national park that suites the ecotourism. On the survey we shot some beautiful pictures of the largest flower ever known in the world the Raffles flower, surprisingly this flower bloom up in the tree not  on the forest floor.  We also took some butterfly pictures there.

Below is Great Blue Mime (Chilasa paradoxa), as the name suggest (paradox) this butterfly mimics the poisonous Euploea mulciber. This forest butterfly usually seen flying low.

Gita Persada crew visited Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. We spent a couple days in there. We where hosted by WWF (World Wildlife Fund) in RPU Rhino Camp. We where there to initiate a butterfly conservation project outside the national park and also initiate an ecotourism routes in lampung which include the national park and Gita Persada Butterfly Park. This routes will provide a seamless lampung ecotourism package.

While in there we took the liberty take many pictures of Sumatran Moth and many macaques. The photos can be seen below. We also did a little safari an walked the elephant and rhino track, and at night walked the tarsier track.

Bandar Lampung Immanuel Junior High School visited Gita Persada Butterfly Park on Saturday, 7th February 2009. They were visiting Gita Persada as an off class biology and conservation course. While on site they toured around the park, checking papilot in our butterfly museum, and also released butterflies from our butterfly conservation program.

The students released Papilio peranthus, Delias hyparete, and Papilio polytes. They toured around the park and saw Papilio palinurus and Hebomoia glaucippe which very rare in our park.

The student also learned how to make a mini butterfly garden in their home. This small conservatory project will also contribute to sumatran butterfly conservation.

Mr. M.S. Kaban, Minister of Forestry, visited Gita Persada Butterfly Park a couple weeks ago at Monday, July 7th 2008. We prepared a Butterflies Photos and Paintings  Exhibition for the minister. While in the park Mr. Kaban was admiring the range of vegetation in the park, especially Pagoda flower (Clerodendrum paniculatum). Mr. Kaban toured around the park and also saw our nursery with samples of sumatran hard wood plants.

Mr. Kaban wrote some comments in our guestbook, it said that we have to develop the park to be an economic sustained park such eco tourism, and range of butterfly related merchandise products.

TPI or Indonesia Education Television was covering Gita Persada Butterfly Park for one week last week. Gita Persada Butterfly park will be featured in a show called Jendela or Window.