The butterfly catcher
My road journeys have been far & fewer between but I can vividly remember some of the stretches . The Jakarta — Yogyakarta route via Bandung, the Dharamshala — Chandigarh via Pathankot, the Konkan highway through the Western Ghats etc. These are one off travels as someone said “It is the journey, not just the destination” so usually, these are moments when you try to merge into oblivion but these were also times when the debates on environmental issues were not so warmed up like the rising temperature of the earth.
On work, I drive between the southern states of India quiet often, mostly the Bangalore — Coimbatore — Cochin roads. These 500 to 700 KM journey, many a times gets you thinking on the development of the national highways & its impact on nature. The Coimbatore — Bangalore stretch is particularly vulnerable to a so far unnoticed effect on insects like butterflies & moths. The metamorphosis of the butterfly is a beautiful manifest of nature in its ultimate primordial energy. By the time I reach Banglore on a 7 hour drive on Route 7–47, I know I would have killed countless butterflies that blindly hit the body of my car as I speed through at about 100 km/hour. When I reach Bangalore I see my car splattered with multiple spots of butterfly wings ! So you can imagine what happens to these butterflies when thousands of Cars & trucks travel these roads daily. I feel sad, really sad when I travel this route every time because it seems I am helplessly, haplessly killing a beautiful creature without ado.
I felt that there must be a way around this problem. So here is my submission which perhaps scientists & environment experts would have a thesis to share &/or merit a deeper research into the cause & effect.
You might have heard about the Butterfly effect? If butterflies can create such a flutter in distant places then this ‘primordial energy’ can be tapped, preserved & distributed though a eco-friendly method, possibly?
The idea is about creating butterfly farms at a certain distance from the big national highways where butterflies are prone to breed. The farm is meant to attract & keep the butterflies in this vicinity so that they do not stray into the wheels on the Highway. Whilst we create these farms we also build some kind of a barrier to insulate them further. The barriers could be created, by planting tall creeper plants that act as another ring of breeding area for the butterflies. People might aver that these ideas are impossible & preposterous to even think about, but think again & perhaps someone somewhere might find a solution for such issues & better ways to protect each & every creature in the planet 1 way or the other.
Another submission is that if it is true that the Flutter effect of the butterflies in the Eastern Ghats produces a tornado in S. America why can’t we possibly harness that energy into creating air pockets along the 2 sides of the highways that will act as barriers to save the butterflies itself? If the mechanism works the energy produced can be used for other utilities such as irrigation.
Whether the solutions mooted are possible or not, the purpose & intention is to raise awareness about such phenomenon.
There are many such daily events that go un-noticed in our hurried life & perhaps we all need to think of alternate solutions for the various environmental challenges faced.
