PHL's Butterfly Queen opens garden in Boracay

Elizabeth Lumawig-Heitzmann, the country's known butterfly queen, has opened a Flora Farm Butterfly Garden in this resort island, confident that it would become one of the major attractions in this resort island.
Lumawig is the daughter of Romeo Lumawig, the first Philippine lepidopterist and an internationally acknowledged collector of butterfly and insects.
The opening last Saturday was attended and supported by other international butterfly promoters John Calvert of the Butterfly Garden of Stratford, United Kingdom, and Dr. Maarten Bijleveld, founder of Papiliorama that is a national butterfly garden in Switzerland. Malay town vice mayor Ciceron Cawaling also attended the opening ceremonies.
The Butterfly Garden of Calvert is a prominent tourism destination in the town of Avon in the United Kingdom and is considered as the birthplace of greatest British poet William Shakespeare.
"The newly built Flora Farm Butterfly Garden offers a permanent live exhibition of hundreds of the Philippines' most colorful butterflies, having on show not less than 30 different species during the year," Heitzmann said.
"Butterflies are considered a major dollar industry exports. They have therapeutic effect on people as butterflies make them young. If we export these butterflies to other countries, we have to see it is as necessary. Filipinos have to learn to appreciate the existence of the colorful butterflies," she said in an interview.
Heitzmann, Bijleveld and Calvert became friends while attending different international conferences for the conservation of butterflies in the midst of the developing countries.