Butterfly Garden updates

The signs for the butterfly garden are up. Hopefully this will raise awareness about the existence of our garden, as well as prevent people from picking the flowers or disturbing the plants.

Zhang Xuan and Yuexin at work in the D&T lab

Our sign (: drawn by our resident artist Wang You!

'Do Not Fog'!

Unfortunately it has come to our attention that recently, our school has hired an external vendor to carry out fogging regularly every week in school. Needless to say, fogging is detrimental to the health of the many caterpillars on our plants.

This was initiated in response to parent/student complaints about the mosquitoes in the area, so we hope that the 'Do Not Fog' sign will keep them away from our butterfly garden.

Ms Tan Beng Chiak, a Biology teacher from our school, has told us about the fogging policy and according to the policy, fogging is meant to be used only in cases of an outbreak. A few cases can hardly be considered 'an outbreak', and weekly fogging will very likely worsen the situation, as:

1. It will pollute the air; the area nearby has many classrooms with many Year 1s and other classes taking place there;
2. It will harm or even kill many plants in the area and there are a lot nearby J-Block;
3. The mosquitoes can simply fly away during the fogging and return after it ends, but sedentary creatures such as caterpillars will be stuck on the plants, unable to escape;
4. The mosquitoes may grow resistant to the fog after prolonged exposure.

Hence we do plan to write to the estate department in our school to see if fogging in the future can be perhaps kept away from the garden. Fogging is a major issue not only with regards to our school garden but also to butterfly populations in Singapore in general, especially in urban areas.  It is impossible to maintain a butterfly garden when any butterflies and caterpillars that manage to be there are systematically and periodically killed off once every week.

Not only that, there must be some other environmentally friendly and more feasible solution to this mosquito issue. Why not launch a campaign to minimize stagnant water around the area to ensure that there are no breeding sites for the mosquitoes? Fogging is merely addressing the problems caused by this issue and not its roots, and is a very short-term solution.

In the meantime it has been suggested that we conduct a, and we quote, "search and rescue", for any caterpillars that might somehow still be alive.

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Roots & Shoots sharing

Vivian and Zek Min went for the Roots & Shoots seminars on Saturday April 21st at the Global Indian International School in Queenstown, a sharing hosted by the Jane Goodall Institute. We were honoured to be invited, and grateful, as this event allowed us to widen our social network and foster contacts with others who share a similar interest in butterflies and urban nature.

Some pictures taken...

There were some speakers who discussed about some environmental projects such as raising awareness about feeding monkeys and water conservation.

                                                 

Afterwards, we had a round table discussion. We split into small groups and discussed various topics. This in particular was interesting as all of us in the group had different backgrounds, ideas and knowledge of the environment, and the discussion allowed us to exchange ideas and learn from each other.

At the end of the gathering, a group of people approached us and asked if we would like to join them on a nature walk for their project. Apparently, they had asked our seniors (Project F.U.N.) last year, however they were not able to sustain their connections with them and they hoped that we would be able to do more with them this year. Something exciting to look forward to!

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