ARUNACHAL PRADESH: To make your life interesting, keep moving. That is what this electrical engineer from Roing in Lower Dibang Valley district of Arunachal Pradesh has to say.Minor Pertin is so ardent in his passion for butterfly conservation that he has already discovered three new species. Arunachal’s biodiversity is home to countless species of the insect, making it a hub of researchers. Pertin is invariably their go-to man.
Pertin, 38, is an employee of the Power Department and posted at Miao in the country’s eastern-most Changlang district. He takes time off to follow his passion for chasing butterflies. He is associated with an NGO, Seed, headquartered at Roing. The three butterfly species this lepidopterist and his NGO members have discovered so far are Striped Hairstreak (Yamamotozephyrus Kwangtugenesis), Elusive Prince (Rohana Tokiniana) and Huang’s Mystic.
Japanese entomologists had first recorded Striped Hairstreak in the Hainan province of China. ‘Elusive Prince’ has a Vietnamese connection while Huang’s Mystic was first recorded in Tibet.As a school student, Pertin would chase the butterflies to capture them in his camera. As time rolled by, he started filming and documenting them.
“I go to the jungles in search of butterflies, capture them in my camera and study them. In due course, I got in touch with some experts who helped me in my research,” says Pertin.Experts such as Peter Smetachek from Uttarakhand’s Bhimtal and Isaac Kehimkar from Mumbai have played a big role in his life with butterflies.
Smetachek has his own butterfly research centre while Kehimkar is a retired member of the Bombay Natural History Society. Pertin explores the jungles with his friends-cum-fellow researchers Roshan Upadhyaya and Mayur H Variya.
He began by posting his photographs of butterflies on his Facebook page and other social media platforms. People asked him to go deeper into his hobby, and he thought he could discover more species. Those days, he would mainly explore the jungles of the Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve.
He says he started working seriously on the conservation of butterflies from 2018 when the first Namdapha Butterfly Meet was organised. It got a good response from people within and outside Arunachal. The fourth edition was held last September.
“We are now targeting the local youth so that they could become nature lovers and work for wildlife conservation. Earlier, there was hardly any concept of conservation. There has been a sea change in people, especially the youth, in past two years,” Pertin says.
He and his team have so far recorded 421 butterfly species at the Namdapha National Park and Tiger Reserve. The state government is supporting them. The tourism department has extended financial support to organise the butterfly meet.
Last October, Pertin and his friends went to Mishmi Hills in Lower Dibang Valley and recorded the butterfly species ‘Bhutan Glory’. “This is a beautiful species. It was just a new distribution record since it can be found elsewhere in Arunachal and the country. But this is important from the tourism perspective,” Pertin says.
Changlang DM Devansh Yadav says Pertin and Roshan have raised a lot of awareness on wildlife, especially butterflies, in Miao area around the Namdapha National Park in the past few years. “They take the youth to jungle expeditions to sensitise them about the wildlife in their area and the need to preserve them, not just for tourism but also for overall ecological balance of their homeland,” Yadav said.