Minister Did No Harm to American Butterfly

Minister Did No Harm to American Butterfly

During the visit of A. Simonishvili, The Minister of Agriculture to Megrelia, fumigation carried out with foreign equipment and delivered with great fanfare, did no harm to the American butterflies in the streets of Zugdidi or other villages. A poisonous smoky mixture, gushed from the equipment on the motorway, but reached only the green plants alongside the road. The rest of the area was left untouched. All this was followed by rain during the night which removed the slightest chance of the American butterflies’ annihilation.

The population remained dissatisfied with the activity, as most of them consider the work ineffectual.
Sophio Anchabadze states: “The equipment was used on my street as well. The smoke did not reach even my garden, which is twenty meters away from the gate. There is no result. These butterflies are so wide-spread, that I see no way to solve the problem”.

Jora Shelia states: “If they had distributed the money, spent on these apparatus and poison, we would have done everything better ourselves. Everybody would have taken care of their own gardens and poisoned them. But they did everything the wrong way. They poisoned yesterday and have a look to see if you can notice any results. Though I heard they bought poison for 12 USD a liter.”

Unlike the population, Zurab Lipartia, a representative of the Product Safety, Veterinary and Plant Protection National Service, calls the activities against the American butterfly in Zugdidi effective. According to him, nothing has been spent buying Insecticili Decisi, the poisonous substance or to perform the work this year (to ascertain the amount spent was impossible for us, to our great surprise).

Zurab Lipartia stated: “The reserve liquidation fund functions for emergency situations at our office. Last year the poison was obtained by this fund and 120 thousand GEL was spent on it. We successfully carried out the poisoning of the American butterflies and now we are getting ready to poison the second incubation generation, which is due to take place at the end of August. Our service to the population is free.”

Lipartia denied that the population was asked for service fees and referred us to the heads of the village councils, saying that those were the ones collecting money and carrying out poisoning using the insecticides they gave them.

The population can name the amount of money exactly that they paid to service staff – generally an amount of 10 GEL. They cannot however name the people whom they have paid, as some of them point to service workers, while others name the heads of village councils.

Joni Mishvelia, the head of the Ganmukhuri village council states: “We were left the aggregate to cover petrol and insecticide. We were promised, if we covered the service expenses, they would compensate us for it. People collected 1 or 2 GEL and poisoned their gardens themselves. The local budget did not foresee these expenses and the people had to cover them. If they keep their promise to compensate the spent sum, it would be good. Though, nothing like that has happened yet.”

Most of the population could not afford to pay for the services and this and other reasons prevented them from poisoning their gardens. In the village of Rukhi, despite the fact that people were ready to pay the service expenses, poisoning works have not been held yet. Many Zugdidi streets remained without poisoning. It can be said that the poisoning is too late for these areas, as butterflies have already annihilated the harvest of the population. They mostly damaged cornfields and nut plantations.

We should also point out that the praised equipment, brought in with fanfare, went wrong on the third day, delaying the poisoning process again.

The population continues their fight against the American butterflies with their bare hands; cutting off diseased branches and burning nests using linen, soaked in diesel.

Despite their efforts, the butterflies manage to breed and incubate at a high speed. If they continue to multiply at this rate it will destroy a third of the Samegrelo regions green nature – not to mention the harvest of the population.

Maia Ghubeladze, Zugdidi.