A COMPARISON OF PRICE, RARITY AND COST OF BUTTERFLY SPECIMENS - IMPLICATIONS FOR THE INSECT TRADE AND FOR HABITAT CONSERVATION

Insects can provide one source of income to villagers as part of an al ternative to logging. The Insect Farming and Trading Agency (IFTA) of Papua New Guinea aims to return as much income as possible to village- level insect collectors. An increase in demand or profit margin in the insect trade could potentially benefit sustainable forestry schemes t hat include insect collecting. The sustainability of insect collecting is discussed. Species rarity, specimen prices, and species wing sizes are compared. Prices are greater for rarer species, Prices are correl ated with wing size, particularly at the retail level, but rarity is n ot positively correlated with wing size. Consequently, it should be po ssible to selectively increase the prices of non-rare, larger species at the wholesale level. There is a large wholesale-to-retail price mar kup for some species. So, consumers are probably willing to pay a wide range of prices for some species, and therefore it may be possible fo r IFTA to raise prices for species when IFTA is the exclusive supplier and when there is an indication that there is low price elasticity. A lthough price increases may have a favorable impact on sustainable man agement of tropical forests, steady and long-term increased consumer d emand for insects from tropical forests would likely have a more subst antial impact. Income from extractive reserves is usually non-competit ive with income from timber, hence a broad package of income sources i s usually necessary.