{"id":30243,"date":"2025-09-18T20:46:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/30243\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T20:46:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T20:46:06","slug":"australian-scientists-grapple-with-despicable-butterfly-heist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/30243\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian scientists grapple with \u2018despicable\u2019 butterfly heist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Decades on, lepidopterists are still struggling to repair the damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe created such a taxonomic mess, it will never really be able to be sorted out,\u201d Museums Victoria\u2019s head of strategic collection management Maryanne McCubbin told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just get so angry. It is a despicable criminal act and it has huge scientific consequences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had no right to steal collections that we hold on behalf of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

The numbers are staggering.<\/p>\n

In Melbourne, Wyatt smuggled 827 lepidopterans \u2013 winged insects that include butterflies and moths \u2013 out of the museum in tin containers in a single weekend.<\/p>\n

He stole another 1500 butterflies from a museum in Sydney as well as 603 from the Adelaide Museum.<\/p>\n

Those butterflies now must be affixed with a label designating them as having \u201cpassed through C. W. Wyatt Theft coll. 1946\u20131947\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AA photo taken on August 25 shows a butterfly in the collection of the Melbourne Museum, seen with a label (top) that reads ‘passed through C. W. Wyatt Theft coll. 1946-1947’ which designates this specimen was previously stolen by British ski champion and acclaimed painter Colin Wyatt, at the museum’s premises in Melbourne. Photo \/ William West, AFP<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really vindictive theft,\u201d Victoria Museum collection manager of terrestrial invertebrates Simon Hinkley told AFP.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever in my lifetime have I seen something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wyatt posted the almost 3000 stolen butterflies back to Britain before fleeing.<\/p>\n

The plundered pieces included holotypes \u2013 the original specimen from when the species was first officially described.<\/p>\n

There were also samples of rare metallic blue butterflies that often fly at the top of trees \u2013 caught by a net-wielding collector who strapped himself to tree trunks, local media reported at the time.<\/p>\n

The empty museum drawers were not discovered until later.<\/p>\n

But it did not take long for the museums to narrow down a suspect and contact London authorities.<\/p>\n

Police found Wyatt at home with the stolen Australian butterflies, part of a collection nearing 40,000, Time magazine reported at the time.<\/p>\n

A British judge let him off with a \u00a3100 fine, equivalent to \u00a35000 ($11,500) today.<\/p>\n

The Australian specimens were repatriated, with staff from the three facilities taking more than nine days to sort the colourful fliers and return them home.<\/p>\n

Since the heist, museums have used taxonomists to examine butterfly collections and identify where specimen label data does not match their knowledge of that species \u2013 a never-ending puzzle.<\/p>\n

But not all of them made it back and Wyatt\u2019s stolen butterflies are still being found.<\/p>\n

A precious holotype butterfly was discovered in Munich in 2022, mislabelled for almost eight decades.<\/p>\n

\"SimonSimon Hinkley, collection manager of terrestrial invertebrates at the Museums Victoria Research Institute, inspects a collection of butterflies at the Melbourne Museum. Photo \/ William West, AFP<\/p>\n

It was only after a skilled entomologist spotted the Peacock Jewel and realised that it belonged to the Melbourne facility that the butterfly was returned.<\/p>\n

The flying jewel, which has iridescent peacock-green and orange wings, will be hand-delivered to Melbourne.<\/p>\n

In another case, a lepidopterist in Canberra found a butterfly had been painted to resemble another species and mislabelled.<\/p>\n

Hinkley said he wonders how many more specimens are incorrectly labelled.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could go back and meet him and get him before he did that, I\u2019d be keen to ask him why he did it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe damage he did was significant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he did messes with the whole collection … you can\u2019t trust anything that has been through his hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

-Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Decades on, lepidopterists are still struggling to repair the damage. \u201cHe created such a taxonomic mess, it will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,15408,1135,18598,8486,9060,29266,29259,13845,18325,29260,111,139,69,29263,9433,29264,213,6100,1346,107,2742,29265,29262,102,29261],"class_list":["post-30243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-almost","tag-australian","tag-butterfly","tag-colin","tag-decades","tag-deception","tag-despicable","tag-eight","tag-grapple","tag-heist","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-precious","tag-scientists","tag-specimens","tag-sports","tag-still","tag-stole","tag-then","tag-thousands","tag-untangling","tag-vandalised","tag-with","tag-wyatt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}