UST HAS upgraded the Botanical Garden with a new butterfly sanctuary, improved water features and new identification tags for trees, officials from the Facilities Management Office (FMO) said on April 24.
FMO Director Fr. Dexter Austria, O.P. said the butterfly sanctuary would serve as an indicator of sorts of the level of pollution within the campus.
“If our air is so polluted, the butterflies will not thrive,” Austria said.
“These are also sanctuaries for people who wanted to have a more relaxed environment…they could go here and find some relaxation,” he added.
Austria said the revival of the butterfly sanctuary, which has three kinds of butterflies—Lime, Appias paulina, and Psyche—was the “first chapter” toward transforming UST into a “green and sustainable campus within the city.”
Jared Gunting, environmental, health, safety, and crisis engineer of FMO, said more butterfly species would be added in the future.
“While this is a good starting point, our goal is to gradually introduce and support more local butterfly species, further strengthening biodiversity and promoting native ecosystem,” he said.
Gunting said the new identification tree tags include QR codes that lead to a website containing more information about the plant species.
“We are slowly improving, slowly enhancing the botanical garden by making sure that all of the plants inside the campus are well accounted for,” he said.
Water features inside the botanical garden, like ponds and fountains, are now functional, and an overhead sprinkler system was recently installed, he said.
“We have introduced these features that not only improve the aesthetic quality of the space, but also help create more conducive microclimate for plants and animals inside the botanical [garden],” Gunting said.
The Botanical Garden was established in 1932 as a pharmacy garden. It was later transformed into a botanical garden by the Faculty of Pharmacy, the College of Science, and the Research Center for the Natural Sciences.
The Butterfly Sanctuary is open to the public from Monday to Friday, 9 to 11 a.m. and 2 to 4 p m. It will be closed on weekends and holidays.
