El Bosque Nuevo-The New Forest-is a special project in northwestern Costa Rica that uses butterflies to save forests. Like tropical ecology the interrelationships between chrysalis and clear-cuts are complex but rational. The project started from an understanding that the needs being met by the destruction of the world’s rainforests are real and one way to reduce deforestation is to meet those needs in another way.
 The world needs lumber and wood pulp and local communities need a way to make a living. Historically this has meant cutting the trees, then planting food crops or pasturing cattle. El Bosque Nuevo is trying a new approach on 91 hectares purchased in 1995. About half of the land was primary forest and the other half clear cut pasture. They’ve set aside the native forest as a preserve and planted a 70,000 sapling tree farm on the pasture land.
The trees on the farm need care providing employment opportunities in the community, and eventually they’ll need harvesting, processing and replanting as well. The timber and pulp from the farmed trees will reduce the need to cut virgin forest. The snag in the plan comes when you realize that trees take decades to grow to a profitable size, and the employees probably can’t wait that long for their first paycheck. That’s where the butterflies come in.
Many of the food plants for caterpillars prefer to grow in shaded locations. Using the space between the rows of trees for a second crop, applying modern techniques to Lepidoptera husbandry, and selling the pupae to butterfly gardens world-wide the New Forest has created income, more local jobs, and found a way to give the trees time to mature.
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