Special Butterfly in Fuerteventura
Updated: Jul 15
Monarch butterflies in our garden #permaculture
Our managing director Antje has described it in her text: Permaculture means creating habitats for insects and any kind of small animals/ wildlife.
(If you want to know more about permaculture, click here: https://www.meerblickfinca.com/en/permakultur .)
We have managed to do that in our garden. We were able to create a habitat for the monarch butterfly on Fuerteventura.
First of all, it is important to know that this type of butterfly is threatened with extinction. Normally, their habitat is in America. They migrate from the Californian summer habitat to the Mexican winter habitat, several thousand kilometres. But due to significant deforestation and newly built settlements, the butterfly population has dropped dramatically.
The monarch butterfly has spread to the Canary Islands, especially to the islands of Tenerife, Gran Canaria, La Palma and La Gomera. It is assumed that the butterfly found its way to the Canary Islands around 1880.
It is amazing that such a seemingly delicate animal can travel thousands of kilometres. The monarch butterflies have a special ability, they orientate themselves to the sun and thus know where and when to fly. One also speaks of a so-called "solar compass" that the animals possess.
For a caterpillar to pupate into a beautiful butterfly, it needs lots of food. We planted the silk plant and observed that it was completely "eaten" in just a few days. Moreover, we had planted just 2 silk plants, but suddenly 3-4 plants grew without any human influence. The caterpillars were happy and ate the leaves like there was no tomorrow.
And then the time had come, we could observe a caterpillar pupating.
The cocoon after the caterpillar has turned into a butterfly.
In the meantime, several monarch butterflies fly in our garden and the silk plants also keep growing back, so we hope that the population of monarch butterflies on Fuerteventura will steadily increase.
This is a beautiful example that permaculture actually creates habitats for animals and that nature provides by itself what is needed. We are looking forward to discovering more impressive nature experiences.
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