This past week has seen a collaboration between our NGO partner in south Nepal, Mithila Wildlife Trust (MWT), and Butterfly Watchers’ Nepal, in conducting a first survey of the butterflies of Dhanusha District (MWT’s home District). The survey took place in the conservation area of Dhanushadham Protected Forest, in our Miyawaki plantations at the Dhanushadham Wildlife Corridor and Dhanushadham Bird Park and at the nearby Cultural Village facility. You can read all about the study and its findings in this excellent report, but suffice to say the researchers identified 51 species, including the Common Pierrot pictured above.

We were particularly excited to record two extremely rare species in our Gurkha Memorial Forest – 1 (GMF-1) plantation, this being the first of the planned 13 GMF plantations that we set up last year. These species were Moore’s Ace (Halpe porus), an the Plain Tawny Rajah (Charaxes psaphon imna), pictured below:

These sightings are a very encouraging sign of restoration of biodiversity; the GMF-1 plantation was formerly agricultural land.

It was also noteworthy to count 23 Common Emigrant butterflies, a species usually found in national forest, suggesting that they are using our wildlife corridor to migrate to our sites and through these to the Dhanushadham Protected Forest.

Well done to everyone involved in this important baseline survey.