A green corridor for butterflies

At a time when the city roads are clogged most of the day, it is heartening that some people are hopeful of constructing a ‘butterfly highway’ in New Delhi to ensure these pollinators continue their crucial task.

It is providential that such a highway will not include such prerequisites as land acquisition, environmental and municipal clearance and shifting of pipelines, as then the likelihood of it actually taking shape increases.

Planting connecting patches of greenery to link parks and other wooded spaces that butterflies prefer will certainly facilitate their travels around Delhi, provided citizens don’t mind their gardens, road verges and empty spaces being made into butterfly magnets.


That former US President Barack Obama rolled out a plan in 2015 to make a 1,500-mile corridor for them from Mexico to Minnesota shows that butterflies are not taken lightly by many nations. And Delhi’s butterfly highway plans may well have been inspired by his Pollinator Partnership Action Plan to incentivise creation of habitats to facilitate migration of all pollinators.

But just as Obama’s successor’s determinationto build a Mexican border wall is threatening to trump this initiative for itinerant pollinators in North America, Delhi’s butterflies — like its other inhabitants — may not find it easy to wing it around the Capital either.