Di Francesco Tomasinelli

Aggiornato il 13/09/2010       

Rodhes Island is one of the most crowded tourists location in Greece. It’s a big island, covered by an arid landscape, pine forest and interested by extensive urbanisation on the coast. In the North-Eastern part of the Island, in Petaloudes area, hides a tiny valley, less than 1 km long, crossed by a creek that enables dense vegetation to grow, especially big plane (Platanus orientalis) and liquidambar (Liquidambar orientalis) trees. This special place is known as the Valley of Butterflies and hosts one of the biggest concentration of butterflies in the world, second only to the monarch butterfly wintering sites in Mexico. In summer month, from june to september, hundred of thousand of jersey tiger moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria, once called Panaxia or Callimorpha quadripunctaria) congregate here to escape the heat, lick the sap of the trees and mate. Trunks and rocky walls are covered by huge carpets of these insects, the endemic subspecies Euplagia quadripunctaria rhodosensis, found only in Rhodes.
Since the sixties the small valley has become an important tourists attraction. This caused attrition to moths population, because of huge number of visitors and guide stressing the insects to see them flying. Now the valley boosts a strict regulation, involving surveillance cameras and guards to prevent disturbance and it’s still a big attraction. With more than 450.000 visitors each year, this is the second tourists site in Greece, after the Acropolis in Athens. Despite all the efforts it seems that the moths population is slowly decreasing and the UNESCO is planning to include the sites in the world heritage list to further protect it.

A special thanks to George Spartalis, Giorgio Kontaxis, Marco Maggesi and Ilaria Mangini.