In the heart of the Poblado II neighborhood of Pereira, there is a place that at first glance and due to the habit of having a blessed green landscape goes unnoticed, many will say that it is weeds, but it became the home of more than 250 species of insects and birds that are in charge of spreading more seeds for their own benefit and that of the bees.
“Nine years ago, this environmental session area that belongs to the mayor’s office was the destination for the neighborhood’s garbage, even more so after the natural enclosure, people opened the plants to put the garbage in,” says Olga Patiño, the environmental conservator who possible this sanctuary in the midst of pollution.
The Urban Fauna and Flora Refuge is next to the supermarket on 33A Street, visitors can be amazed at how much life there is in this place: opossums, hawks, crab spiders, tortoise beetles, (memberships, devil insects or tiny monsters from the rain forest, which are very scarce), even buzzards come to eat the chicken skins that the neighbors give to Olga.
When Olga came to live in the house next to this space, there were only three mango sticks and one avocado stick. “What I have done is let it grow and 2 and a half years ago I spoke with the animal protection agency, they told me to start putting in everything I found of species, for example at this moment the parrots bring their children, they leave them all the time. day and they pick them up in the afternoon, it is their nursery”.
A baby stick horse is camouflaged among the grass, in this place there are even colonies of spiders that make a kind of horizontal social fabric.There is an international platform called Naturalis, every year there is a competition and the Refuge has always been in third place. Last year they participated for the first time in a Proceda (Citizen Environmental Education Projects) of the Carder and this year they already won it, Olga is also part of Risaralda Arthropods, which increases conservation and generates a kind of census of the insect population.