Winged Obsession

The Pursuit of the World’s Most

Notorious Butterfl y Smuggler

by Jessica Speart

William Morrow

With $45,000 you could get a new car, place a down payment on a nice condo, even snatch up a lock of Justin Bieber’s hair on eBay — or you could illegally purchase the corpse of an endangered yellow crested spangle butterfly.

Believe it or not, there are people — mostly rich, male and from Japan — who will invariably choose the butterfly.

“It’s a very serious obsession. Some of them have hard times holding down jobs, a number of really obsessed ones have signs of Asperger’s,” says author Jessica Speart, who penned this “Orchid Thief”-style expose on the bizarre subculture of illegal butterfl y smuggling.

Speart, a mystery writer by trade, found that her fi ctional crime world resembled the bug world to a discomfiting degree: serial killers and obsessive bug collectors share similar profiles. The book follows the efforts of undercover agent

Ed Newcomer as he struggles to gather enough evidence against the kingpin of butterfl y smugglers, Yoshi Kojima, who claimed to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off illegal sales of multi-colored wings.

Kojima is not likely exaggerating. The US Fish and Wildlife Service conservatively estimates that the illegal butterfl y trade is worth about $200 million a year. With the help of Speart, The Post gathered a list of the most coveted and rare butterfl ies, many of which are on endangered lists and are illegal to capture or sell:

Ornithoptera goliath

Goliath birdwing

Up to $1,000 for a male and female pair

They’re called Goliaths because they’re huge, the second-biggest butterfly in the world (first is Queen Alexandra). It has a wingspan of up to 11 inches and is noted for its graceful, birdlike fl ight. Although it is illegal to sell or transport without permits, it is legal to farm these butterflies with the necessary international permissions. Local farmers in New Guinea are known to breed and sell them

Ornithoptera meridionalis

Southern-tailed birdwing $500 to $1,000 for a male and female pair

The smallest of the wide-winged butterflies (called “birdwings”) are an iridescent green tinged with gold and only found in less than a handful of locations in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. The males have a bulky body and are weak fl yers, spending most of their hours resting close to the ground. They, like most of the butterfl ies on this list, are threatened both by poaching and habitat loss. Still, there’s little butterfly collectors won’t do to possess special species like these. Some collectors have been known to rent small armies in dangerous places like Burma or even train poaching gangs that roam Central Asia in search of the winged holy grails.

Ornithoptera alexandrae

Queen Alexandra’s birdwing $8,500 to $10,000 for a male and female pair

The biggest butterfl y in the world, the blue-and-green Queen Alexandra hails from Papua New Guinea. Female wingspans can run up to a foot, so big that early explorers knocked them out of the sky with shotguns. It is illegal to capture and sell specimens, but there are rumors that some Queen Alexandra’s birdwings are kept in vaults in Japan — stowed away by commercial dealers who hope to capitalize on their prices if these butterfl ies soon become extinct.

Ornithoptera croesus

Wallace’s Golden Birdwing $200 to $280 for a male and female pair

The butterfl y was fi rst observed by British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who caught sight of the bird-like butterfl y in 1859. Although it took him three months to catch one, he eventually brought in more than a hundred. During that time, there were no rules in place protecting rare butterfl ies; now there are strict international laws. Smuggler Kojima was caught red-handed with some in 2006 but spent a mere 21 months in jail.

Papilio hospiton

Corsican swallowtail $800 to $1,000 for a male and female pair

These small butterfl ies, native to Sardinia, are one of the four most endangered butterfl ies in the world. Although they’re “not much to look at,” Speart says, because of their rarity they are one of the most coveted. According to Speart, butterfl ies are killed and mounted and then sent via Express Mail because the high volumes of packages makes it impossible for customs to catch them as they don’t show up on X-ray scanners. Often, they arrive in “rectangular Tupperware containers,” wrapped in wax paper envelopes with wings folded to fool inspectors.