The Profile of Rick Mikula

Rick Mikula is owner and operator of Hole-In-Hand Butterfly Farm and MonaMe Kennel. He is President of the International Butterfly Breeders Association and Vice President of Education for the Canadian Butterfly Breeders and Exhibitors Association. He also serves on the Board of Directors for The Vermont Envirosphere Project. 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 is also co-founder of Butterflywebsite.com, which is the oldest and largest butterfly web site in the world. He is also the pioneer and inventor of the releasing butterflies at weddings and funerals and has helped to make it a global phenomenon.

Rick has written many books on butterflies including “The Family Butterfly Book”, “The Butterfly Fandex” and "Garden Butterflies of North America". He is also a recipient of the ‘Garden Writers Association of America’ highest award, The Quill and Trowel, for excellence in communication. Rick has written regular columns for the award winning ‘Environment Pennsylvania’ and ‘People, Places, and Plants’ magazines. He has also been personally featured in over 3 dozen magazines and hundreds of newspapers worldwide. Rick 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 24 years has conducted thousands of high energy and fast paced presentations for all types of groups from Pre-k daycare to college, and 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, book and article 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 “The Butterfly Emporium” for Dolly Parton in Dollywood, The Hershey Gardens Butterfly House, TechnoVentures’ traveling display, and Bear Mountain Butterflies. He has also helped numerous organizations install butterfly gardens at their locations. Rick has also been consultant to various endangered butterfly re-establishment projects such as The National Wild Turkey Federation and in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. He also conducts butterfly and botanical photography tours through Central and North America.

Rick Mikula has been fortunate to have been featured in various forms of the media. some samples are included below.

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