RIP Colin Smith (Nepal)

[adamcotton]

I have been reliably informed that the Nepal butterfly expert, Colin Smith, passed away on November 4th in Kathmandu aged 87.

I remember he visited me here in Chiang Mai many years ago (1985?), and I have a signed copy of the 1989 edition of his book Butterflies of Nepal which he sent me. He also wrote many other books on Butterflies of Nepal, and was actively studying butterflies until very recently.

Adam.

[Kirkwilliams]

I remember chatting to him in the queue to get into the AES at Kempton Park years ago.
Must pull out his book tonight.

[bobw]

I read his obituary in the Daily Telegraph when I was in my way to the Natural Histiory Museum in London about 3 weeks ago. I told the staff there but didn't think to report it here. I met him a couple of times in the 70s when he came back to London, and he was a very personable and knowledgeable guy. I still have a few specimens in my collection that he gave me. RIP Colin. I'll see if I can find the obituary.

[bobw]

The obituary is here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/ ... -obituary/. Although you'll need to sugn up to a free trial to read the whole thing.

[adamcotton]

Here is the text of the interesting obituary from The Telegraph, for those who cannot access it:


Colin Smith, maths teacher who became an authority on the butterflies of Nepal – obituary
He spent the last six decades of his life in the Asian republic, where he was known as ‘Putali Baje’, or ‘Butterfly Grandpa’

By
Telegraph Obituaries
9 November 2023 • 6:00am

Colin Smith, who has died aged 87, travelled to Nepal aged 29 to teach mathematics, science and English and stayed on to become an authority on the country’s butterflies.

Nepal is one of the best places in the world to see butterflies. Of the 17,500 or so known species, 660 are found in Nepal, of which 20 are on the endangered list. Smith dedicated more than 50 years to their study, publishing numerous research papers and several books and becoming known by locals as “Putali Baje” (“Butterfly Grandpa”).

Colin Philip Smith was born on November 24 1936 in Highgate, north London, to Ebenezer Smith and Rose, née Boosey. As a boy he often visited an uncle whose collection of butterflies and moths sparked an interest which he pursued during school holidays at Boy Scout summer camps.

After taking a BSc in mathematics at Imperial College London, followed by an MSc at University College, he became a teacher, and in 1966 volunteered to serve with the United Mission to Nepal (UMN), a venture involving a number of Christian groups. “I was told that alongside teaching, I needed to have a hobby, too,” he recalled. “I told them that I collected butterflies.” The UMN suggested that he make a collection from Nepal to bring back home.

Instead he decided to stay, and while teaching at a school in Pokhara he met Dorothy Merow, a fellow teacher who had started a small natural history museum and who persuaded him to collect butterflies for it.

After seven years’ teaching Smith decided to devote himself full-time to butterflies. His rare visits to England thereafter included a trip in 1976 to the Saruman Museum (aka the National Butterfly Museum) to learn the latest techniques for handling specimens.

Back in Nepal, he started writing for local natural history journals and in 1989 published his first major study, Butterflies of Nepal (Central Himalaya). His initial goal was to collect specimens of all the 660 species of butterflies found in Nepal with a view to publishing a comprehensive checklist; later, however, he turned to capturing butterflies with a digital camera. His Illustrated Checklist of Nepal’s Butterflies was published in 1995.

In the early 2000s Smith began working mostly on Nepal’s far more numerous moth species, travelling round the country with a fluorescent bulb and a white sheet, collecting specimens for Kathmandu University. Other publications include Lepidoptera of Nepal (2010) and A Photographic Pocket Guide to Butterflies of Nepal, In Natural Habitat (2011).

For many years Smith lived with the family of a Nepali fellow lepidopterist near Pokhara, but in 1995 he bought a small plot of land nearby and built himself a tiny one-room cottage. Last year he was reported to be living on a British pension of £175 a month along with an elderly allowance of 4,000 Nepalese rupees (around £24.50). “I was maybe the richest man in Pokhara in my prime,” he reflected, “But now I’m probably the poorest.”

In 1995 he made the first of several attempts to be granted Nepalese citizenship, but it was only in 2019, after friends organised a petition, and after Smith had been ill for several years, that the government finally responded, and he became the third foreigner, after Sir Edmund Hillary and Toni Hagen (the first foreigner to travel throughout Nepal), to be granted honorary citizenship.

Nepal is now struggling with the social and environmental costs of mass tourism, but in an interview last year Smith recalled that when he first arrived, there were “hardly any roads, let alone vehicles. Only one foreigner had a bicycle.”

Other than a brother living in New Zealand, Smith had no other close relatives. His wish was to have his ashes scattered on the Seti River that flows down from the Annapurna mountains.

Colin Smith, born November 24 1936, died November 4 2023

[Chuck]

Sounds like a long life well lived.

[Paul K]

RIP Mr.Smith
Wow 660 species in small, high altitude country.
In the whole Canada we have here just close to 300 species!

I just checked again and it’s not that small country, just because it is sandwiched between India and China looks so on the maps. Also includes almost all zones of south slop of Himalayan ridge which explain huge diversity of species.
It is for sure good place to visit but unfortunately I don’t think I will have the opportunity to do so.

[hitmouse]

Apologies, complete newbie here. I just found that Colin Smith has died, and this really interesting forum came up on Google. Thankyou adamcotton for posting up a copy of the paywalled Telegraph obit.

I stayed with Colin for a month in Pokhara, probably in 1989 (his book had recently been published) having seen a a note entitled Butterfly Collecting in Nepal on the notice board in the undergraduate biology common room of my university. I wrote to Colin and he invited me to come along. He was a very kind, generous, eccentric and occasionally irascible man living in a small 3 room bungalow. In one room lived his assistant & family. He subsisted mainly on Dahl Bhat and french toast. He could quote most of Worzel Gummidge word for word. When he was running short of money he would make and sell marmalade. He also sold occasional butterfly specimens to collectors worldwide. He had made friends with the commander of the British Army base in Pokhara, a moth enthusiast, and so was able to use the British Forces Overseas Post, which was cheap and which I suspect avoided customs. It was how I got my collection home, and when I returned to the UK I paid Colin for his hospitality in UK stamps.

We collected butterflies and dragonflies for a month. Colin was trying to grow chrysalis and caterpillars into butterflies and moths at his museum in Tribhuvan University: these were poorly referenced and he was curious to see what emerged. While he was in the museum he lent me his collecting gear, and I wandered around the countryside on my own having a great old time. In terms of formal biology, he was completely self-taught, and it was interesting discussing insect ecology and evolution from my callow undergraduate zoologist perspective. The fact was, he had decades of field experience, and his understanding of the subject was profound, if a bit unconventional. He was proud of his collection of Pieridae, started as a boy, exhibited in the museum collection, which confessed I found a little dull compared to some of the butterflies flying around outside. Following the publication of his first book he felt that he had photographed all of the known butterflies in Nepal, and decided to start photographing the dragonflies, a project that does not appear to have reached completion.

[adamcotton]

He had made friends with the commander of the British Army base in Pokhara, a moth enthusiast

I guess that must have been Col. Mike Allen, who I used to know when he became Defence Attaché at the British Embassy in Bangkok.

Adam.