Get a taste of what awaits you in print from this compelling excerpt.

In a world among the clouds, entomologist David Hawks and I keep watch for the brilliant jewel scarabs of Honduras’s tropical montane forests. We wait like fishermen with nets cast, standing beside lighted white bedsheets spread on the ground. When the jewels fly in, raining color against the cloth, we feel like kids again.

We collect jewel scarabs—to estimate their population sizes and study their ecology and distribution. Dave joined me here in 1992, bringing his passion for jewels with him. Since then we and others have found seven new species in Honduras, and we rediscovered a species once thought extinct.

Not surprisingly, scarabs have also seduced commercial collectors. While many sell for a few dollars, a bright red specimen might fetch $200, the finest gold, $500. With such a bounty on scarab heads, some conservationists worry that populations could be depleted. But our research suggests otherwise.

Catching insects isn’t like hunting jaguars. Millions of jewel scarab eggs, larvae, and pupae remain underground, while collectors take only adults. Meanwhile, the journey to scarab habitat weeds out all but the most determined. Many cloud forests are a strenuous trek away; others require a helicopter.

The biggest threat to scarabs is not insect hobbyists but loss of habitat as tropical forests are converted to farms. We believe that regulated beetle collecting by local people—and, in time, beetle farming—could actually help slow this process. It has been successful elsewhere with butterflies and other insects.

If a cottage industry developed, some local people might find that a treeless patch of land is worth less in the long run than a standing forest full of jewels.

Get the whole story in the pages of National Geographic magazine.