SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The butterfly exhibit at the San Diego County Fair is a wonderland with a special mission: to bring attention to the depleting butterfly population around the world.
“Over the past 20 years, the amount of toxins that have been used in our environment has just hugely escalated, and we’re basically wiping out all the habitat for all the butterflies," said John Dailey, the chief butterfly wrangler at the exhibit.
Dailey got into the butterfly business after gifting his wife a butterfly specimen. "I thought she’d like it. As soon as I gave it to her, I could just tell, no. You could see by her face. So, I said, 'What’s wrong?' and she says, 'Well, it’s dead,'" he recounted.
Dailey redeemed himself.
For their anniversary, he built a big netted environment in their backyard and filled it with 200 live butterflies.
"The next day, of course, you wake up and you’ve got 200 butterflies. What do you do with them? So we said, let's take it down to the school. We took it down to the school and it grew from there," he said.
Fourteen years later, Dailey said the exhibit has become the largest commercial butterfly exhibit in the country.
He said running the exhibit is a lot of fun.
It also comes with a reward.
Some people walk away with a passion for helping butterflies by planting plants to help them flourish.
“In the butterfly world, you have host plants and necter plants. The host plant is what the butterfly lays their eggs on. It’s the food source for the caterpillar so that's what we need to plant. So for the monarchs, that’s probably the best known one - it’s milkweed," he said.
Admission to the exhibit is $10 for a family of four.
