Eighteen-year-old Duncan Jurman from Florida, the United States, is one of the 2021 winners of the Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes for his environmental educational project to bring back butterfly populations and his efforts to spread the idea.

The prize is a national award that celebrates inspiring, public-spirited young people from across the United States and Canada. Several of this year’s top winners are pursuing “green” projects.

Jurman is now a student at NSU University School in Davie, Florida, who found his passion early in life. He is the founder of an environmental educational project called “Bring Butterflies Back, Inspiring Youth to Protect Butterflies for Future Generations.”

“I was around like 4 or 5 years old, and I remember being in my backyard and I always loved the caterpillars,” he said. “I loved just seeing all the different types, and how much variation there is among them. I grew up and learned about metamorphosis and how butterflies come into being.”

“I think one of the reasons that I really fell in love with butterflies and caterpillars, is that they’re very accessible,” he said. “If you want to attract a butterfly, for example, you plant some nectar sources or a lot of flowers. If you want to return a certain species of butterflies like the monarch butterfly you would plant milkweed.”

Jurman started a butterfly garden at his home, where he has raised and released over 5,000 butterflies over the years.

With butterfly populations declining 80 percent since 2005, Jurman wants people to understand how important they are to South Florida’s ecosystem. To highlight that fact and make it accessible to other students, he created a butterfly vivarium and garden at his school.

“I’ve always been learning about butterflies within our ecosystems and everything I can about biology,” he said. “But I think in high school, one of the major steps that I took was creating a garden for my entire school, which includes a vivarium.”

Part of the joy for Jurman is watching the younger students get excited when they visit the butterfly enclosure. He wants to share the passion that ignited for him when he was younger.

“Whenever a butterfly lands on them, or I put a caterpillar in their hands, the young students immediately fall in love with them. They develop a new appreciation for insects,” he said.

Even with the restrictions of COVID-19, Jurman has continued to do his teaching through Zoom video presentations.

“I’ve been doing what I have called the Seed Project,” he said. “Since I can’t bring the kids into the garden during the coronavirus, I’m trying to help them start their own gardens at their own homes by providing seeds for the native plants.”

Aside from Jurman’s passionate interest in the wonders of this metamorphosizing insect, he understands that butterflies play a key role in maintaining the environment.

“Butterflies are really important for the environment for two main reasons,” he said.

“No. 1 is that they pollinate the flowers like bees. They are one of the most important pollinators in the world.

“The other important reason is that they are food for a lot of the larger species and ecosystems like birds and lizards,” he said. “If butterflies and caterpillars disappear, then so do all the other ones above them on the food chain.”

Jurman is bent on making his efforts global in reach. He’s already started with a trip to Cuba that he took in the summer of 2019.

“We traveled all over the eastern side of Cuba and researched the distribution of different butterflies and tried to find some of the unknown host plants,” Jurman said.

“Because of all the research that we were doing, we are thinking about creating a butterfly field guide for Cuba. They have one, but it’s very outdated. Many of the species that are in the Cuba guide are not even there anymore,” he said.

His vivarium is now an ongoing part of his school’s K-12 curriculum. His environmental action group, Bring Butterflies Back, has formed a partnership between local schools, NSU University School, the BCBC and the University of Florida extension and to help local schools with their gardens and to help further develop outreach efforts.

(SD-Agencies)