Admiral butterfly breeding programme underway

For a number of years, we have been trialling a breeding programme for yellow and red admiral butterflies off site. We have secured funding from the local Forest and Bird administered Valder Funding Grant to purchase a biomesh covered 4.5 metre long tunnel house. This is being installed at our depot off Grenache Place in Rototuna. Both the yellow and red species are in decline. The red particularly so and it is regionally extinct in some areas of New Zealand. This is primarily because of loss of host plants (habitat loss) and predation by introduced wasps (there are three species). The largest of New Zealand’s endemic nettles, Urtica ferox or ongaonga, is a woody shrub that can grow up to 5 metres in height and is favoured by the red and yellow admiral for egg laying. Within the safety of this nettle bush, admiral larvae find the perfect home to grow, with plentiful food and some protective cover from predators. Nettle will be grown in large 12Lt plastic planter bags inside the tunnel house and pruned to contain their size, along with some nettle being planted outside to attract any butterflies in the area. From experience this would be predominately yellow admirals. Caterpillars will be gathered from the outside plants and relocated into the tunnel house, where they will be able to finish their life cycle protected from wasps. Once hatched they will be released to the outside. Another possibility could be to capture a female when seeing it laying on the outside nettles and release it into the tunnel house to lay in there. We are growing extra nettle seedlings with the hope that some of the people that live on the gully edge may have a suitable place to develop a nettle grove so that we can grow a sustainable population in Mangaiti.