Business Opportunities Weblog

June 17, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

Los Angeles Times:

Cooing softly in baby talk, German Viasus gently uses a toothbrush to bathe the little animal he has raised since infancy and then pampers it with a fresh meal of mango, bananas and melon. The object of his affection? A beetle the size of a hamster with a hard, shiny shell and 2-inch-long horns.

Viasus, 36, is a Colombian entrepreneur who is exploiting the beetle-mania sweeping Japan by raising and exporting hundreds of the creepy-crawlies every month.

He has become a fearless (in more ways than one) pioneer of Colombia’s somewhat belated effort to promote the legal exploitation of its biodiversity, a stunning variety of plant and animal species that is second only to Brazil’s.

Despite its natural riches, Colombia produces only about $17 million in “bio-commerce” a year, mainly in native foliage used in floral arrangements and aromatic, medicinal and cosmetic herbs, said Jose Andres Diaz, a consultant to Colombia’s equivalent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That’s only a quarter of what neighboring Peru exports, he said.

His effort contrasts with the illicit trade of a host of rare and endangered Colombian wildlife and plant species, which are smuggled out of the country every day. In the last year, Colombia’s environmental police have seized thousands of scorpions, turtles, flamingos, tarantulas, anteaters, sloths and other species, including beetles. Police say one of the hot contraband items of the moment is meat of the chiguiro, or capybara, the largest rodent in the world and fast disappearing from Colombia’s eastern jungles.

But Viasus plays by the rules. His is the only Colombian firm with a license to export beetles. He doesn’t gather them from the rain forest, their natural habitat, but produces them at his farm just outside Tunja, 80 miles northeast of Bogota, the capital.

There he raises Hercules, Neptune and Megasoma elephas beetle species, among the largest in the world. A male Hercules beetle measures up to 7 inches long and is distinguished by dagger-like horns that, in a pincers movement, are used to flip its male competitors in a sort of miniature judo maneuver.

Photo by Chris Kraul.

In Animals, Eco-friendly, Niche | 1 Comment