Assam to celebrate Big Butterfly Month: India 2020

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI: Assam along with rest of India is going to celebrate Big Butterfly Month: India 2020 in the month of September starting from September 5 to 20.

"This would be the first of its kind in India where butterfly experts, enthusiasts and organizations across India have come together to host a month-long celebration," says Rajib Rudra Tariang, Head, Department of Zoology, Digboi College, who is the State Coordinator for the Assam-Big Butterfly Month (A-BBM) events in Assam.

Gayatri Dutta, State co- coordinator for the event said that this practice of documenting butterfly will make it more popular among common people. Participants from all the districts of Assam have been covered and more than 301 participants have registered for events.

All persons can get involved in the events and main purpose is to popularize butterfly species to the entire citizen. Many people do not know their ecological role in our ecosystem both in the rural and urban habitat including the forest ecosystem. This event will surely create many new naturalists and would help in conservation.

"Butterflies play a vital role in the ecosystem. They act as a food source for various other organisms such as spiders, wasps, dragonflies, birds and lizards. They also help in plant pollination and, importantly for us, act as very good ecological indicators of the health of the environment and ecosystems. So, studying butterflies is imperative to understand our surroundings," Tariang said.

The aim of the Big Butterfly Month: India 2020 is to bring the citizens of the country together under the umbrella of butterfly lovers to preserve the current habitat and to build new habitats for butterflies. In the process, diverse ecosystems may get improved as havens for our native biodiversity, which is very much needed. The popularity and scope of citizen science appears almost limitless. For citizens, the motivation is to contribute to science, public information and conservation with their strength in numbers, unmatched enthusiasm and a broad geographic spread. Scientists, on their part, offer a systematic way to collect information in a strong scientific framework and on a scale that would otherwise not be possible.

The Big Butterfly Month is being held on an all-India level, where the participants would collect the data in their backyard of the species of butterflies that are seen. Education materials would be distributed through free-to-share media such as YouTube and state/regional level mentors guiding in the identification process. For the first time in India, more than 30 organizations working in the field of Biodiversity and its conservation have come together towards the common goal of involving citizens in large scale monitoring programs. The celebration would include competitions and institutional outreach programs through the virtual media educating and sensitizing people about butterflies.

The big butterfly count would be held from September 14th to 20th September 2020 with various activities such as Big Butterfly Count, Butterfly Online Workshops, Butterfly Gardening Workshop and contests on Butterfly Photography, Butterfly Journaling, Butterfly Quiz, Butterfly Videography, and Butterfly Lifecycle, will be conducted. Butterfly Origami and webinars on butterflies for school and colleges will also be conducted on a virtual platform, in keeping with the current COVID 19 scenario.

All participants/butterfly enthusiasts are encouraged to log in their submissions into our well-established and preferred citizen science digital platforms: https://www.inaturalist.org/ or https://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/ or https://indiabiodiversity.org/. There will be a series of such webinars related to Butterfly Identification, Life Cycle Study, Survey Methods, etc in month says Tariang. To facilitate this mega events, each districts has a District coordinators and also a coordinators and interested candidates can be connected to the respected district of Assam. For more details write to assambigbutterflymonth@gmail.com and contact 7002115446/6901415858.

Also Watch: Caught on Camera: Concrete Bridge Gets Washed Away