The Profile of Rick Mikula

Rick Mikula is owner and operator of Hole-In-Hand Butterfly Farm. He is a co-founder of Butterflywebsite.con which is the first and largest web site dedicate solely to butterflies. Rick is also is co founder and past president of President of the International Butterfly Breeders Association and past Vice President of Education for the Canadian Butterfly Breeders and Exhibitors Association. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Center for Landscape Design & Stewardship. He is a past Secretary and Treasurer of the New Jersey Lepidopterist Society, which initiated the Tiger Swallowtail in becoming the New Jersey state butterfly. Rick has also helped New York to choose the Red Spotted Purple as their official Sate Butterfly. He is also the pioneer and inventor of the releasing butterflies at weddings and funerals and has helped to make it a global phenomenon. He also supplies both live and mounted butterflies for movies, TV commercials, magazines, newspapers, and photographers both professional and private..

Rick is an internationally recognized lecturer and in the last 28 years has conducted thousands of high energy and fast paced presentations for all types of groups from Pre-k daycare to college, and from incarcerated youth programs to assisted care facilities and garden clubs. His "Spread Your Wings and Fly" seminars have trained hundreds of people world wide to become professional butterfly producers. He also teaches a semi-annual landscaping workshop at Rutgers University, conducts writing courses, and trains park naturalist and interrupters in the art of presenting 'unforgettable' programs throughout North America and Canada.

Rick is a butterfly habitat consultant to many schools, commercial businesses, museums and zoos. He has designed many 'live butterfly' displays such as "Dolly Parton's Butterfly Emporium" in Dollywood, Clyde Peelings Reptiland, The Hershey Gardens Butterfly House, and Techno-Ventures' traveling display. Rick has also helped numerous organizations and schools install butterfly gardens at their locations and served as consultant to various endangered butterfly re-establishment projects such as with The National Wild Turkey Federation, the Government of the Dominican Republic and private concerns in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Rick also serves as a consultant for many professional entertainers, TV and movie productions including CSI - Las Vegas and National Geographic Kids Magazine. In his spare time, Rick also conducts butterfly and botanical photography tours through Central and North America.

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