Planet-hunters set for big bounty
Rocky planets, possibly with conditions suitable for life, may be more common than previously thought in our galaxy, a study has found.
New evidence suggests more than half the Sun-like stars in the Milky Way could have similar planetary systems.
There may also be hundreds of undiscovered worlds in outer parts of our Solar System, astronomers believe.
Future studies of such worlds will radically alter our understanding of how planets are formed, they say.
New findings about planets were presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston.
Nasa telescope
Michael Meyer, an astronomer from the University of Arizona, said he believed Earth-like planets were probably very common around Sun-like stars.
“Our observations suggest that between 20% and 60% of Sun-like stars have evidence for the formation of rocky planets not unlike the processes we think led to planet Earth,” he said. “That is very exciting.”
Mr Meyer’s team used the US space agency’s Spitzer space telescope to look at groups of stars with masses similar to the Sun.
They detected discs of cosmic dust around stars in some of the youngest groups surveyed.
The dust is believed to be a by-product of rocky debris colliding and merging to form planets.
Nasa’s Kepler mission to search for Earth-sized and smaller planets, due to be launched next year, is expected to reveal more clues about these distant undiscovered worlds.
Frozen worlds
Some astronomers believe there may be hundreds of small rocky bodies in the outer edges of our own Solar System, and perhaps even a handful of frozen Earth-sized worlds.
Speaking at the AAAS meeting, Nasa’s Alan Stern said he thought only the tip of the iceberg had been found in terms of planets within our own Solar System.
More than a thousand objects had already been discovered in the Kuiper belt alone, he said, many rivalling the planet Pluto in size.
“Our old view, that the Solar System had nine planets will be supplanted by a view that there are hundreds if not thousands of planets in our Solar System,” he told BBC News.
He said many of these planets would be icy, some would be rocky, and there might even be objects with the same mass as Earth.
“It could be that there are objects of Earth-mass in the Oort cloud (a band of debris surrounding our planetary system) but they would be frozen at these distances,” Dr Stern added.
“They would look like a frozen Earth.”
Goldilocks zone
Excitement about finding other Earth-like planets is driven by the idea that some might contain life or perhaps, centuries from now, allow human colonies to be set up on them.
The key to this search, said Debra Fischer of San Francisco State University, California, was the “Goldilocks zone”.
This refers to an area of space in which a planet is “just the right distance” from its parent star so that its surface is not-too-hot or not-too-cold to support liquid water.
“To my mind there are two things we have to go after: we have to find the right mass planet and it has to be at the right distance from the star,” she said.
The AAAS meeting concludes on Monday.
via bbc
Planet hunters find ’super-Earth’
Planet hunters have discovered an icy “super-Earth” circling a distant star.
International astronomers suspect it is a bare, icy, rocky world, much colder than the Earth and 13 times its mass.
The planet was spotted last April but details have only just been revealed in a paper submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The extra-solar planet is one of a mere handful detected using a novel technique called microlensing.
The planet orbits a star about half as big as our Sun, positioned some 9,000 light-years away. At -201C, it is one of the coldest extra-solar planets to be discovered.
Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, US, was one of the first people to discover it.
He said the find has two main implications.
“First, this icy ’super-Earth’ dominates the region around its star that in our Solar System is populated by the gas-giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn,” he said.
“We’ve never seen a system like this before because we’ve never had the means to find them.
“And second, these icy ’super-Earths’ are pretty common. Roughly, 35% of all stars have them.”
Brightening effect
Professor Gould is leader of the Microlensing Follow-up Network (MicroFUN) collaboration.
It is one of several international groups looking for Earth-like planets in planetary systems other than our own using the phenomenon called gravitational microlensing.
The technique is an indirect way of obtaining information about large celestial objects that are too dim to see.
When a massive object such as a star crosses the path of a background star, it acts like a powerful lens, gravitationally bending and magnifying the light rays from the more distant star.
The object’s gravity amplifies the starlight, causing it to brighten as the body passes in front of the star.
This can be observed by telescopes on Earth as a brightening and fading effect, as the lens star floats across the face of the background star.
Neptune-mass
Clues to the presence of the planet were first seen last April by a Polish astronomy project led by Professor Andrzej Udalski from Warsaw University.
When Gould and Udalski realised the star was brightening extremely quickly one night, they alerted the duty astronomer at the MDM Observatory in Arizona.
“It was four in the morning,” Gould recalled, “I was very excited and frantic to get someone to observe that star.”
Astronomers in Arizona took more than 1,000 measurements of the event, which, coupled with software models, confirmed the presence of a Neptune-mass planet, 13 times heavier than Earth.
Gould suspects the planet is a bare, icy Earth-like one, a sort of cold “super-Earth”, although he cannot be certain.
“We can’t really tell for sure,” he said. “If we start getting more statistics on this type of planet, we could piece together a better story.”
Extraterrestrial life
Since the 1990s, astronomers have discovered some 170 extra-solar, or exoplanets, a planet which orbits a star other than the Sun.
There is great interest in finding extrasolar planets that are like the Earth, since these could, in theory, have the right conditions for supporting life.
In January, a new planet 5.5 times the mass of the Earth - the smallest yet - became the third exoplanet to be detected by the microlensing technique.
Tim Naylor, professor of astrophysics at Exeter University, UK, said microlensing had great promise for the future.
“It holds out the promise that we will discover many Earth-sized planets with this technique,” he told the BBC News website.
via bbc
Goldfish memory myth busted
A 15-year-old South Australian school student has busted the myth that goldfish have a three second memory.
Rory Stokes, from the Australian Science and Mathematics School in Adelaide, conducted an experiment to test the commonly held theory that goldfish have short memory spans.
He was also keen to open people’s minds to the cruelty of keeping fish in small tanks.
“We are told that a goldfish has a memory span of less than three seconds and that no matter how small its tank is, it will always discover new places and objects,” Rory said.
“I wanted to challenge this theory as I believe it is a myth intended to make us feel less guilty about keeping fish in small tanks.”
Rory’s experiment involved teaching a small group of fish to swim to a beacon by establishing a memory connection between the beacon and food.
Over a period of three weeks, he placed a beacon in the water at feeding time each day, waited 30 seconds and then sprinkled fish food around the beacon.
The time taken for the fish to swim to the beacon reduced dramatically, from more than one minute for the first few feeds to less than five seconds by the end of the three weeks.
Following the initial three-week period, Rory removed the beacon from the feeding process.
Six days later, he once again placed the beacon in the water and despite not seeing it for almost a week, the fish swam to the beacon in 4.4 seconds, showing they had remembered the association between food and the beacon for at least six days.
“My results strongly showed that goldfish can retain knowledge for at least six days,” Rory said.
“They can retain that knowledge indefinitely if they use it regularly.”
Rory also conducted a number of other experiments to show goldfish were capable of negotiating a simple maze, by having them move onto a second beacon if they found no food at the first.
“My experiments showed that goldfish have the mental capabilities to learn and remember fairly complex concepts and they can retain that knowledge for at least a number of days,” he said.
Australian Science and Mathematics School principal Jim Davies said the series of experiments were an excellent example of science investigation made fun.
via news.com.au
Reference: The goldfish, Carassius auratus, was one of the earliest fish to be domesticated, and is still one of the most commonly kept aquarium fish and water garden fish. A relatively small member of the carp family, the goldfish is a domesticated version of a dark-gray/brown carp native to East Asia. It was first domesticated in China and introduced to Europe in the late 17th century.
Goldfish may grow to a maximum length of 23 inches (59 cm) and a maximum weight of 9.9 pounds (4.5 kg), although this is rare; few goldfish reach even half this size. The oldest recorded goldfish lived to 49 years, but most household goldfish generally live only six to eight years, due to being kept in bowls. A group of goldfish is known as a troubling.
The end of cheap food
FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.
That is why this year’s price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist’s food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years (see article). That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.
But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America’s reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America’s (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV’s fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world’s overall grain stocks.
Dearer food has the capacity to do enormous good and enormous harm. It will hurt urban consumers, especially in poor countries, by increasing the price of what is already the most expensive item in their household budgets. It will benefit farmers and agricultural communities by increasing the rewards of their labour; in many poor rural places it will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth.
Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill also depends in part on governments. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery, especially among the urban poor. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor, rescue farming from subsidies and neglect—and minimise the harm to the slum-dwellers and landless labourers. So far, the auguries look gloomy.
In the trough
That, at least, is the lesson of half a century of food policy. Whatever the supposed threat—the lack of food security, rural poverty, environmental stewardship—the world seems to have only one solution: government intervention. Most of the subsidies and trade barriers have come at a huge cost. The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging markets. And for what? Despite the help, plenty of Western farmers have been beset by poverty. Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land. Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that.
With agflation, policy has reached a new level of self-parody. Take America’s supposedly verdant ethanol subsidies. It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version of ethanol (far better to import Brazil’s sugar-based liquor); they are also offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging overproduction. Intervention multiplies like lies. Now countries such as Russia and Venezuela have imposed price controls—an aid to consumers—to offset America’s aid to ethanol producers. Meanwhile, high grain prices are persuading people to clear forests to plant more maize.
Dearer food is a chance to break this dizzying cycle. Higher market prices make it possible to reduce subsidies without hurting incomes. A farm bill is now going through America’s Congress. The European Union has promised a root-and-branch review (not yet reform) of its farm-support scheme. The reforms of the past few decades have, in fact, grappled with the rich world’s farm programmes—but only timidly. Now comes the chance for politicians to show that they are serious when they say they want to put agriculture right.
Cutting rich-world subsidies and trade barriers would help taxpayers; it could revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boosting the world economy; and, most important, it would directly help many of the world’s poor. In terms of economic policy, it is hard to think of a greater good.
Where government help is really needed
Three-quarters of the world’s poor live in rural areas. The depressed world prices created by farm policies over the past few decades have had a devastating effect. There has been a long-term fall in investment in farming and the things that sustain it, such as irrigation. The share of public spending going to agriculture in developing countries has fallen by half since 1980. Poor countries that used to export food now import it.
Reducing subsidies in the West would help reverse this. The World Bank reckons that if you free up agricultural trade, the prices of things poor countries specialise in (like cotton) would rise and developing countries would capture the gains by increasing exports. And because farming accounts for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries, it is the most important contributor to the early stages of economic growth. According to the World Bank, the really poor get three times as much extra income from an increase in farm productivity as from the same gain in industry or services. In the long term, thriving farms and open markets provide a secure food supply.
However, there is an obvious catch—and one that justifies government help. High prices have a mixed impact on poverty: they hurt anyone who loses more from dear food than he gains from a higher income. And that means over a billion urban consumers (and some landless labourers), many of whom are politically influential in poor countries. Given the speed of this year’s food-price rises, governments in emerging markets have no alternative but to try to soften the blow.
Where they can, these governments should subsidise the incomes of the poor, rather than food itself, because that minimises price distortions. Where food subsidies are unavoidable, they should be temporary and targeted on the poor. So far, most government interventions in the poor world have failed these tests: politicians who seem to think cheap food part of the natural order of things have slapped on price controls and export restraints, which hurt farmers and will almost certainly fail.
Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are hogging the world’s wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though, is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.
by economist
Everything About Tea
Camellia sinensis is an evergreen plant and grows in tropical to sub-tropical climates. In addition to tropical climates (at least 50 inches of rainfall a year), it also prefers acidic soils. Many high quality tea plants grow at elevations up to 1500 meters (5,000 feet), as the plants grow more slowly and acquire a better flavor. Only the top 1-2 inches of the mature plant are picked. These buds and leaves are called flushes, and a plant will grow a new flush every seven to ten days during the growing season.
Tea plants will grow into a tree if left undisturbed, but cultivated plants are pruned to waist height for ease of plucking.
Two principal varieties are used, the small-leaved China plant (C. sinensis sinensis) and the large-leaved Assam plant (C. sinensis assamica).
History of Tea
Tea is so much a part of everyday life in Britain that we might never stop to think about how a unique plant from faraway China became the nation?s favourite drink. But the history of tea is fascinating, and in this section we can follow its story from the earliest times in Imperial China right up to its present place at the heart of British life.
Read about the exotic beginnings of tea ” the legends surrounding its origins as a drink, its popularity among the Chinese emperors, and the cultural significance of the Japanese tea ceremony. Discover how tea was brought to England by a seventeenth century queen, and how important the tea trade was to the British East India Company, one of the most powerful commercial organisations the world has ever seen. Learn how the phenomenal popularity of tea in the eighteenth century led to widespread smuggling and adulteration, and about the murderous lengths smugglers went to to protect their illegal trade. Read also about the Boston Tea Party of 1773, which sparked off the American Revolution, and how rivalry between the English and the American tea traders in the nineteenth century led to the excitement of the Clipper races. And trace the social history of tea in Britain, from the early debates about its health-giving properties, to the rise of the tea bag, via the great tradition of the London Tea Auction and the role of tea in boosting morale in the World Wars.
Tea Facts
- Drink your way to the top…
- 80% of office workers now claim they find out more about what’s going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way.
Big in India…
- Apart from tourism, tea is the biggest industrial activity in India.
A long time ago…
- Tea was created more than 5000 years ago in China.
The first book…
- The first book about tea was written by Lu Yu in 800 A.D
Arrived in Europe…
- Tea firstly appeared in Europe thanks to Portuguese Jesuit Father Jasper de Cruz in 1560.
How many cups a day…
- The number of recommended cups of tea to drink each day is 4, this gives you optimal benefit.
Bag it up…
- 96% of all cups of tea drunk daily in the UK are brewed from tea bags.
As you like it…
- 98% of people take their tea with milk, but only 30% take sugar in tea.
A cup of tea to keep the dentist away…
- Tea is a natural source of fluoride that can help protect against tooth decay and gum disease
And the doctor away…
- Tea has potential health maintainence benefits in cardiovascular disease and cancer prevention.
Good for you…
- Tea contains half the amount of caffeine found in coffee.
Everyone’s favourite…
- By the middle of the 18th Century tea had replaced ale and gin as the drink of the masses and had become Britain’s most popular beverage.
Tea break time…
- Tea breaks are a tradition that have been with us for approximately 200 years.
Everything brewed from the leaf of the tea plant is tea.
Everything else is something else!
We will use here the term tea for the “real” tea, otherwise mention the origin (herbal, fruit, Mate etc.)
All tea comes from the same plant. It was thought at one time that green and black teas were made from different plants. In fact it is only the different plucking and processing methods that produce the different types - green, black, oolong, white, yellow, Pu-erh or scented.
Many different varieties within each category result in hundreds of teas from all over the world.
The leaves are plucked as the new shoots or “flush” are beginning to grow (two leaves one bud). These tiny young shoots and their thin, unopened buds produce the most delicate and flavourful teas. Picked and processed by hand only these delicate young leaves go into the making of a premium tea.
Black tea is the most common tea in Europe. Although the first tea that came to Europe was green, black tea seems to be more suited for our taste and has displaced green tea almost completely.
The picked leaf undergoes a full fermentation process composed of six basic steps - withering, rolling, sorting, fermenting, firing (or drying) and grading.
1. Withering
The leaves are exposed to hot air for several hours in order to reduce their water content by 50% to 60%. This step starts to free up the enzyme responsible for oxidizing the leaf (fermentation). It also softens the leaves, preparing them to undergo subsequent operations without breaking. The leaves must not be broken or bruised (except for oolong).
2. Rolling - The leaves are rolled (by hand or mechanically) allowing the essential oils to spread and to impregnate the buds. The aroma of the tea depends on these essential oils.
3. Sorting - A calibrated screen is used to sort the tea. The smallest leaves go directly to the next stage, while the larger, tougher ones undergo a second rolling.
4. Fermentation - This entails the chemical reaction of the leaves and their components (polyphenols) with air, humidity and heat. This is a crucial moment, one in which the aroma, bite and colour of the tea (turns coppery red) are determined. If this step is stopped too soon the tea is greenish and can have a metallic after-taste; if it is fermented too much it becomes sweetish and loses both quality and aroma.
5. Firing - The characteristics of the tea become fixed at this stage (colour of the leave turns black). Drying the leaves in the oven stops the fermentation process. If the leaves are not dried enough (if more than 12% humidity remains), the tea may be attacked by mould. If they are dried too much (if less than 2% to 3% humidity remain) the result is a tea without aroma since the aroma-carrying elements remain largely insoluble.
6. Grading - The leaves are separated by size or grade. This operation also cools and aerates the leaves.
Once this process is complete 100 kg of fresh leaves will have yielded 20 -25kg of black tea.
Soluble tea is a black tea that has undergone the usual production steps but that is dried even further and reduced to powder. This type of tea has the advantage of being easier to crate and ship for export. It is also ideal for the two tea innovations of the 20th century: iced tea and the tea bag.
Green tea is often referred to as “unfermented” tea.
- Firing - The leaves are placed for 20 to 30 seconds in large iron basins heated to about 100° Celsius. This operation destroys the enzyme that causes fermentation. The leaves then remain green. In Japan this process is accomplished by exposing the leaves to steam.
- Rolling - As for black tea the smaller and more tightly rolled the leaf the more robust the tea as more components are released.
- Drying - This allows some evaporation of the water contained in the leaves to prevent mould.
- Sorting - This is the step where the grades are separated out. Just as for black tea the process uses sieves or screens of different calibers (see our range here) .
Oolong means “black dragon” and is generally referred to as “semi-fermented” tea.
It is produced only in China and Taiwan in similar way as black tea (withering, rolling, fermentation, firing). The difference is that the leaves are wilted in direct sunlight and then shaken in bamboo baskets to lightly bruise the edges.
In the next step only the bruised edges are fermented the core of the leaf is still green hence half fermented.
Oolongs are always whole leaf teas, never broken by rolling.
They have a distinctive peachy flavour (Wu Yi Yan Cha Oolong).
White tea is produced on a very limited scale in China and Sri Lanka.
The new buds are plucked before they open and allowed to dry. The curled-up buds have a silvery appearance and produce a very pale, straw-coloured tea with a fine, aromatic and mild character (unfermented).
This used to be the tea for the Chinese Emperor. It is said that only white dressed virgins were allowed the pluck the buds with their mouth in the early morning to keep the tea as pure as possible (White Bud).
Yellow tea is only produced in China, often made from the leaves of wild growing tea bushes.
In the past monkeys were trained to pluck the leaves because they often grow in inaccessible terrain.
It is best placed between green and Oolong tea.
The making of yellow tea is similar to green tea (unfermented). After firing and rolling the leaves are stored in small piles in a room with a constant humidity for about two hours. During this procedure the leaves get their yellow colour.
The range of sorts is very limited and there are only small quantities available.
The aroma of Yellow tea is famous, with hints of chocolate and coffee (Huan Chan Mao Feng).
Pu-erh tea is originally from South-China (Yunnan). The production is different to this of black or green tea.
- A basic tea is produced (Qing Mao). The freshly plucked leaves are wilted, then slightly roasted, rolled, shaped (to bring it into leaf form again), dried, rolled, shaped and dried again.
It is fermented with water (which includes certain necessary bacteria) over a period of 40-50 days.
- The little piles of tea have to be turned and watered regulary and the right mix of temperature (under 60°C) and humidity is crucial.
- The fermentation is stopped by treating the tea with hot air (150°C) which also kills the bacteria.
Pu-erh is often sold in different forms (nests, squares, biscuit). Due to its unique manufacturing process Pu-erh tea posses a distinctive earthy flavour (Pu-Erh lemon).
Scented tea is created when the additional flavourings are mixed with the leaf at a final stage before the tea is packed. For Jasmine tea (the oldest existing scented tea, invented in China), whole jasmine blossoms are added to green, black or oolong tea. Fruit-flavoured teas are generally made by blending the fruits’ essential oils with tea (for example Earl Grey is black or green tea mixed with the oil of the Bergamot).
Apart from the classical teas the brewing of parts of a plant was and is practised all over the world. Here are some “non classical” teas:
Mate tea comes from South America. It was found in ancient Indian graves and has a long tradition there.
The leaves are plucked from the mate bush (Ilex paraguayensis St.- Hil.) and briefly heated for dehydration.
Afterwards the leaves are fermented for about 30- 45 days and finally dried.
The result is green mate with a slightly sweet-sour, smokey taste. A certain percentage is being roasted to a stronger, smokier taste (roasted mate).
Mate tea is very popular in Argentina, Brasil and Paraguay.
It contains 0.5-3% caffeine which has a coffee like effect due to the absence of tannic acid (unlike green and black tea).
In South America a little pumkin is filled half with mate leaves and then filled up with boiling water. The quite strong brew is sucked in through a tube. In Europe mate is brewed like other tea (max. 5min brewing time).
Rooibush tea is made from the leaf and bark of a South African bush (Aspalathus linearis, in Afrikaans: Rooibos).
The name “red bush” comes from the fact that the plant turns fire red in the seventh year and dies. It was discovered in the 19th century north of Capetown.
Rooibush is choped, fermented for 8-24 hours (turns into red-brown colour) and then dried.
The taste is fresh-fruity and there is no acid or caffein in Roibush tea. It’s alkaline nature and high percentage of vitamin C and vital minerals makes this tea an ideal drink for children, expectant women and it is perfect to drink at nighttime.
Most Roibush comes as scented tea (Roibush Applestrudel).
The brewing time is 5-10 minutes and it is made like normal tea.
Lapacho tea also comes from Sout America.
Lapacho is a tree (Tabebuia serratifolia, up to 20m with beautiful red blossoms) whose bark is used to brew tea (boil for 4-5 minutes, brew for another 15-20min.).
The list of essential, healthy ingredience is long. Lapacho is detoxicating, blocks inflamation and cancer growth, strenghtens the immune system and wound healing, lowers high blood pressure and fever and is used against depression.
Herbal tea is a infusion of one or multiple herbs and/or spices.
In the past they were mostly used as medicine. With the progress of medical science herbs fell into oblivion. Nowadays herbal infusions are re-discovered. They do not contain caffeine but minerals and vitamins instead. Best known are camomile, nettle and mint infusions (see our range here).
Fruit tea is made from fruits of all kind. The range of these teas is virtually unlimited. The basis is usually hibiscus, hawthorn and apple enriched with different fruits and flavours. They can be drunk hot and cold and at any time of the day.
If you decorated the hall of your wedding party with hundreds of exotic butterflies shipped in from an African rainforest, your friends might think you stylish, extravagant, even decadent.
But according to some Kenyan entrepreneurs, you could be helping save one of east Africa’s last remaining patches of natural forest, home to thousands of rare species.
Countries that are poor but rich in flora and fauna are increasingly seeking new ways to save wildlife from poverty and population pressure. Most rely on visits from dollar-bearing eco-tourists.
For the people of western Kenya’s Kakamega forest, though, there is more than one way to make money from your wilderness.
Besides tourist lodges and tree nurseries growing valuable species of timber and herbal medicines, they set up a farm which cultivates butterflies for export in 2001.
Buyers range from European scientists studying the behavior of forest-dwelling creepy crawlies to fashion designers and New York socialites wanting to spruce up their parties.
“We get orders from Americans wanting 400 butterflies to look pretty around their wedding reception,” says Roseline Shikami, a project founder. “I don’t know why butterflies. In Kenya, we use balloons.”
Shikami says scientists in Europe request species to study their diets, anatomy or mating habits. A fashion designer ordered some to match her dress at a function.
“Her outfit is black-and-white, so she wanted the butterfly to match the color of her dress,” she says, pointing to a black-and-white patterned insect flitting around an enclosure.
HUNGRY CATERPILLARS
Successful butterfly farming is tough. First, you have to catch at least two members’ of the species you want — different sexes. Then you have to persuade them to mate.
When the eggs hatch, you feed the caterpillars on their favorite forest leaves until they wrap themselves in a cocoon. The insects have to be exported in pupa form or they will not last the journey.
“Some of them hatch in just a few days, so you need to ship them out quick,” said butterfly farmer Benjamin Okalo.
Besides butterflies, Kakamega’s forest dwellers are planting and harvesting trees for commercial wood and medicines, including the red stinkwood, hailed as a cure for prostate cancer.
Other plants cure malaria and stomach ailments, locals say.
“We estimate 70 percent of these plants have medicinal properties, but only a fraction have been discovered,” John Atsango, who guides tourists for the Kenya Forest Department, told Reuters.
Atsango said a local pharmacy had started manufacturing herbal medicines using the plants for export markets.
“We are worried big drug companies will steal the secrets and patent them — I’m not allowed to tell you what half of these plants do,” he said.
Conservationists say the undiscovered medicinal properties of many plant species is one of the strongest arguments for saving biodiversity.
LIMITED MARKETS
Kakamega is the eastern most patch of what was once a vast rainforest stretching from the jungles of west Africa across the Congo into modern day Kenya, before much was chopped down.
Kenyan authorities are keen to halt the retreat of forests in a country mostly characterized by dry savanna and semi-desert. Only 36 of Kakamega’s 238 sq km (92 sq mile) is protected.
But some conservation groups are skeptical about whether schemes harvesting forest products besides timber can make a big difference.
“The problem is there just aren’t enough markets for butterfly pupae,” says Andrew Plumptre of the Ugandan branch of the Wildlife Conservation Society.
“It’s good for relations with the community, but I don’t think it raises a lot of money for conservation.”
Shikami admits the sums of money involved are small — pupae go for as little as $1 each — but she puts that down to unscrupulous middlemen.
“We need our own direct market,” she says, gently scraping a black caterpillar off her hand onto a broad leaf. “We could make a lot more money.”
The Kakamega Forest
The Kakamega National Reserve is a 36 km2 reserve, situated at the north end of the Kakamega Forest, in Western Province, Kenya, at an elevation of about 1560 m, along the northeastern edge of the Lake Victoria basin. Along its eastern edge rises the partially forested Nandi Escarpment which runs along the western edge of the Rift Valley. The Kakamega Forest is generally considered the eastern-most remnant of the lowland Congolean rainforest of Central Africa. Faunally and florally, Kakamega is dominated by central African lowland species, but due to its elevation (predominantly between 1500 m and 1600 m) and proximity to the formerly contiguous Nandi Forests it also contains highland elements and is thus unique. The forest boundary (including the reserves) encloses about 238 km2, of which less than half is still indigenous forest.
Throughout the forest are a series of grassy glades, ranging in size from about 1 to 50 ha, with a few larger clearings. The origins of the glades are uncertain. Some are certainly recent clearings, but others predate recent records. These may have originated from past human activity such as cattle grazing or may be the result of herbivory and movements by large mammals such as buffalo and elephants (both now extirpated from the region). The glades vary a great deal in structure, some being open grass and others having a considerable number of trees or shrubs. A number of streams and small creeks run through the reserve. The larger creeks are usually bordered by a few to tens of meters of forest on either side which divide the glades, while the smallest creeks flow through open grasslands, often forming small marshy patches.
No complete floristic studies have been done at Kakamega. The forest hosts about 160 tree and shrub species, many of Congolean lowland forest affinities, including a number of endemic plant species, mostly ferns and orchids. The flora of the open areas and glades has not been well studied. The glades often have small trees. Conspicuous flowering plants include flame lilies and Gladiolus. The forest edge is lined by dense thickets of Acanthus pubescens , a shrub with sharply spined, thistle-like leaves. Marshy patches are dominated by sedges and the grass Echinocloa pyramidalis .
The forest is best known for its diversity of birds: 367 species have been recorded. The avifauna is a mix of lowland and highland species, but lowland elements dominate. Nine of the species that occur at Kakamega are found nowhere else in Kenya, and two of its species, Turner’s Eremomela and Chapins’ Flycatcher, are threatened.
Insects are abundant and some are quite spectacular, such as giant Goliath beetles, pink and green African flower mantids, and numerous colorful butterflies. Particularly well represented groups are ants, Lepidopterans, Orthopterans, and beetles. Gastropod mollusks, millipedes and spiders are also common.
Kakamega is also known for its diverse snake fauna, with over 40 species, although they can be difficult to find. Lizards are more in evidence, with various skinks, chameleons, and agamas the most common. Amphibians are represented by a number of anuran species, the most common being Bufo and Phrynobatrachus toads and Ptychadena mascariensis frogs.
Except for the monkeys and squirrels large mammals are not much in evidence. Today only smaller antelope (primarily various duikers) and bush pig are present. Small carnivores, such as Egyptian mongooses, African civets, servals, genets, and palm civets are common; some larger carnivores, including jackals, spotted hyaenas, and leopards also occur there. Although rodents, insectivores, and bats are clearly present, they have been little studied at Kakamega.
