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Can Cebu’s rare butterflies still be saved?
THE spotted wings, tinged yellow, shimmer in the sunlight as the butterfly “glides like a tabanog (kite)”—admiring scientists say—in the only place worldwide where they exist today: three towns of southern Cebu.
Meet the Kawasan Paper Kite.
Scientific journals list this butterfly as Idea leucone jumaloni. That tongue-twisting name honors the man who made the discovery: the late Cebuano scientist Dr. Julian Jumalon.
A faculty member of University of San Carlos (USC) biology department, Jumalon stumbled across this butterfly, flitting in three places: Kawasan Waterfalls of Badian; along Tapon River and forest patches of Dalaguete; and the Nugas forest in Alcoy.
A brilliant lepidopterist, Jumalon recognized this butterfly formed a unique sub-specie of the tree nymph found in other Philippine provinces. He hadn’t drawn up the scientific description though when death came.
The university entered the Jumalon find in its listing of entomological collections. Thus, the Kawasan Paper Kite dallied, for sometime, under the non-committal scientific classification “Nomen Nudam,” i.e. without description.
And there it gathered dust—until Seidenschwarz heard of the Jumalon discovery by word-of-mouth. No Jumalon notes were ever found.
This “accidental” find came as Seidenschwarz, a former University of Munich lecturer, scoured data on the biology and habitat needs of endangered Cebu butterfly species.
Seidenschwarz and other USC researchers are building “survival habitats” for insects and plants that are “endemic” or native and found only in Cebu.
They’ve found, for instance, that the endangered Kawasan Paper Kite feeds on an equally endangered vine, Parsonsia. They are therefore working to see the vine is grown in alternate “survival habitats.”
Endangered
Seidenschwarz, meanwhile, contacted the world authority on Philippine butterflies: Dr. Colin Treadaway, a Canadian, who has worked at the Senckenberg Institute in Germany since the early 1950s.
“Treadaway’s Frankfurt home is full of Philippine butterflies,” Seidenschwarz recalls. “He produced the checklist on the islands’ butterflies. And he finally described the Kawasan Paper Kite scientifically, naming it after the Cebuano lepidopterist, Professor Julian Jumalon.”
The USC studies underpin efforts to conserve unique and endangered species, endemic to Cebu, within the university’s Nature Park on its sprawling Talamban campus.
San Carlos University’s conservation attempts go beyond butterflies. Growing now within the park, for example, are saplings of the endangered Cebu cinnamon. This tree grows only in the forest of Cantipla and Tabunan. A team, composed of Fr. E. Schmutz, SVD, A. Colina and Prof. Julian Jumalon collected samples.
It was reported as a new species and named cinnamo-mum cebuenese by A.G.H. Klostermans. Another variety is named cinnamomum sancti-caroli in honor of the San Carlos University researchers who identified it.
“It’s one of the Philippine tree species,” Dr. Seidenschwarz explains.
Also growing in the university park are increasingly scarce native species like tindalo (afzelia rhomobo-dia), palo de hierro (metrosiderosa vera rump), kamagong (diaspy-rasphilippensis).
Rare finds
Cebu’s ecosystems have been ravaged by official blindness, which limits visions to the next elections, megadomes or motorcycles for politically pliant barangay officials.
Population here doubles in just under 35 years. And massive poverty relentlessly exploits resources.
Nonetheless, researchers still stumble across “new finds” that hint at how rich Cebu’s natural resource base used to be. Biologists, for example, counted no less than 360 medicinal plants growing here. Yet, not a single one in this rich pharmaceutical throve has been systematically studied.
Despite a growing herbal medical industry—which imports herbals from India—not a plant has been tapped commercially. There is one significant exception though: Marijuana, and it’s big business.
The spotted deer and warty pig have long been hunted to the ground. A few specimens are kept in the zoos of San Diego, California and Silliman University in Negros Oriental.
USC scientists have since reported spotting birds, once thought extinct, in Cebu’s remaining forest patches: the dark-throated oriole, Cebu flower-pecker (dicaceum quadricolor) and black shama (siloy).
Lost for good
But they are now few and far between. “I haven’t seen yet a siloy,” columnist Roy Lu wrote of a new bird sanctuary in Cebu. “Worse, I have seen birds that will never sing again…the tukmo, the kukuk, the cardinal.”
Seidenschwarz and his team have pinpointed 36 endangered Cebu butterflies, including the Kawasan Paper Kite. And Fr. Roderick Salazar, SVD, president of San Carlos University, has announced that the Nature Park will “have a butterfly sanctuary as a prime component.” The Kawasan Paper Kite is a prime conservation target.
Genes were spliced into miracle rice, high-yielding corn or medicines. Their loss is irreversible genetic forfeiture that closes options for future generations.
Extinction is forever.
An article from Sun*Star dated Oct. 20, 2003
By: JUAN L. MERCADO (Depthnews)
“The Cebu sub-species of the tree nymph is surely the most beautiful and colorful one,” Dr. Franz Seidenschwarz of USC says. “It has an intense yellow tint. In contrast, the Sibutu sub-species, the smallest one in the Philippines, doesn’t have the yellow tints we find in Cebu.”
“It’s used as a remedy for stomach pains and stems are sold in the markets of Barangay Sudlon and Carbon in Cebu City. The price of one tree is equivalent to five days’ salary for one farm worker in the area.”
No bird, butterfly, flower, tree or animal disappears alone, Dr. Norman Meyer of Oxford University cautions. When they slip into extinction, they disappear with their unique genes—the building blocks of life.