Dingtugou Butterfly Village Introduction
Located at the border of Shuishang Township and Taibao City in Chiayi County, Tukuo Village is composed of two communities: Ding Tukuo and Xia Tukuo. It is a typical rural area experiencing population outflow, with only elderly people and children remaining in the community. The living environment is deteriorating, and at one point, the county government proposed setting up a landfill there, which sparked strong protests from villagers and raised their environmental awareness. In recent years, with the government's vigorous promotion of community development and the awakening of local residents, the Ding Tukuo community began its community development efforts in 1998. They revamped the village environment, improved drainage systems, and planted water lilies to enhance the original dirty and overgrown ditches, transforming them into clean streams with ecological traces. Additionally, they planted cotton trees and Marigolds to beautify the environment. Unexpectedly, the appearance of the Graphium sarpedon, also known as the butterfly tree, attracted butterflies due to the sweet nectar produced by the flowers of the cotton trees, leading villagers to decide to plant more cotton trees to foster butterfly populations. With media coverage, the village earned the reputation of "Butterfly Village." In 1999, the village experienced a peak of butterfly activity, hosting events such as "Butterflies at My Home" and "Camellia Seed Festival," which attracted over two hundred other communities for visits and successfully raised the profile of Ding Tukuo Butterfly Village. However, in recent years, butterflies have stopped fluttering in the village due to the invasion of parasitic wasps, which disrupt the butterfly ecology. These wasps lay their eggs inside butterfly chrysalises and gradually consume the larvae, resulting in bees emerging instead of butterflies. Although this is unfortunate, the aging rural image has been transformed with a fresh rural atmosphere, achieving the goal of beautifying the environment. In 2006, the community received sponsorship from the Sinyi Housing Community and a subsidy from the Forestry Bureau for community forestry to develop a green belt ecological education park along the 1.8 kilometers of the Tayuan Railway, which passes through Ding Tukuo and Xia Tukuo communities. They also created the "Butterfly Love Trail" connecting the two communities and established the "Spirit Logo of Flying Butterflies," enhancing the community's multicultural, ecological, and recreational educational functions, hoping to provide a better leisure destination for the public.
