Life's work for sale Collector in Africa seeks new home for millions of butterflies

A Kenyan has been collecting butterflies for almost seven decades, amassing over 4.2 million specimens. Now he is hoping for a buyer - but he is not primarily interested in money.

DPA

02.01.2025, 23:27

dpa

Kenyan Steve Collins was five years old when he first became interested in butterflies. They fascinated him so much that he began to build up a collection. Today, almost seven decades later, it has grown to more than 4.2 million specimens, with hundreds of different species, and could well be the largest of its kind in Africa.

His parents encouraged him to look for butterflies after a visit to the Congo and friends gave them a fishing net, says Collins, now 74. "At the age of 15, I was already visiting other countries like Nigeria to learn more about butterflies." During his 20-year career as an agricultural scientist, Collins devoted his free time to research, and in 1997 he founded the African Butterfly Research Institute in a suburb of the capital Nairobi.

Looking for a dark place

Now, with increasing age and lack of space, he wants to pass on his collection to the next generation. It is private and was only open to the public initially, from 1998 to 2003, when he ran it as an educational center. On his 6,000 square meters of land are hundreds of native trees and flowering shrubs, and hundreds of butterflies dance from one flower to another, sometimes landing on Collins' hand. The African has carefully pinned 1.2 million specimens from all parts of the continent into frames and stowed them on rows of shelves. Another three million are in envelopes.

"They have to be stored in dark places," he explains. It must also be ensured that they are not eaten by other insects or parasites. To protect them, pesticides are applied once a year.

Irreplaceable collection

Julian Bayliss, an ecologist specializing in Africa and visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University in England, says he has been collecting butterflies for Collins for more than two decades. "There is a large part of the collection that is completely irreplaceable because a large part of Africa's habitat is being destroyed," says the expert. The continent is suffering greatly from the consequences of climate change, with increasingly long periods of drought and severe flooding destroying forests and other butterfly habitats.

Bayliss therefore recommends digitizing the collection and making it accessible worldwide. Whoever takes it over "must be an institution that is well-founded, well-funded and secure", he says. Scott Miller from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, who met Collins more than 30 years ago, also points out the value of the collection: it can provide extremely important information about environmental changes over the course of more than 60 years, says the entomologist.

"It's been my hobby for decades"

Collins worries about what will happen when he is no longer able to maintain his research. His most valuable butterfly, which he keeps out of sight to protect it from possible theft, costs the equivalent of around 7700 euros, and he hopes to sell the collection to an individual or a research institution.

Collins estimates that the butterflies and other property together are worth 7.7 million euros. But he is not primarily interested in making a lot of money. "This has been my hobby for decades, and I can't put a monetary value on what I've done so far," he says. I'm currently trying to make sure the species are in safe hands when I'm no longer on this earth."