Our Butterfly Farm was designed to present an ecologically sound, sustainable alternative way to help preserve Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. It is another step in the Lodge's ongoing effort to find viable ways (besides ecotourism) to help save Ecuador's priceless Amazon Jungle.

Many of the people who visit these places (as many as 30,000 per day at Cypress Gardens) are inspired to visit the marvelous Amazon Basin. At the very least, La Selva knows that it makes people think about what they have got before it is gone. Even if it is only for an instant, we feel that it has accomplished something of great value: awareness.

There are more than 50 butterfly exhibition houses in Canada, the United States and Europe. As for the guests of La Selva, they have the opportunity to see this miracle of nature and with luck they may even witness the marvel of metamorphosis.

Our Farm is perhaps the best photo opportunity that the lodge has to offer.

We breed butterflies – we do not catch them in the forest – and sell them alive as pupa all over the world.

The Butterfly Farm was the first professional enterprise of its type in South America, the only one in the world located in the primary rainforest.

La Selva produces as many as 20,000 butterflies per year from egg to caterpillar to pupae for exportation.

We sends pupae to such diverse locations as a zoo in Holland, a castle in France, and Cypress Gardens in Florida where they fly in enclosed botanical gardens, spreading the message of beauty and the importance of the Amazon jungle with every beat of their wings and providing another example of ecotourism for our guests.

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