Butterfly farmers are protecting east Africa’s largest coastal forest
EVELYN MAKENA, BIRD STORY AGENCY BEFORE becoming a butterfly farmer, Dickson Mbogo made a living by selling charcoal from trees he cut in the forest. “In my search for food and an income, I was destroying the forest,” he said. Now, after getting involved in butterfly farming, Mbogo’s weekly routine involves visiting sections of Kenya's eastern Arabuko-Sokoke Forest to capture butterflies using trapping nets. Home to some of the world’s endangered animals and plants, the Arabuko-Sokoke Forest Reserve is the most extensive indigenous forest on the east African coast. Once part of an extensive coastal forest that ran from southern…
