Just a note regarding the Butterfly House at the Otago Museum. I just found out it was closed for redevelopment in July this year, and will be reopening next month (December). Development of Museum’s new science centre set to begin Otago Museum’s popular Discovery World Tropical Forest will be closed following the July school holidays to allow construction to begin on the second stage of the development of its highly anticipated science centre. Reopening in December this year, the Museum’s latest attraction, supported by $500,000 in funding from the Otago Community Trust, will be home to 50 new science interactives and a refreshed Tropical Forest butterfly house. See you later butterflies The butterflies at the Otago Museum’s Tropical Forest will be left to die but its birds and tarantulas will live in an animal-friendly construction zone during a $2.5million redevelopment. Discovery World and the Tropical Forest will be without butterflies and the public from Monday until December while the work is completed. Otago Museum living environments communicator Eden Gray said no new butterflies would be released during construction and those in the forest at present would be left to live out their natural life-spans of one week to one month. "The terrapins, quails, java sparrows and tarantulas will all remain in their forest home during renovations." The forest refurbishment would focus on cleaning and rebuilding mostly behind-the-scenes areas that were integral to the forest’s operations, she said. About 90,000 people visited the space each year and changes to the forest might go unnoticed. "They will all contribute to the ongoing and improved welfare of the forest and its inhabitants." Fifty new science interactives would also be a feature of the science centre when it reopened.
The Otago Museum now has Goliath Stick Insects from Wellington Zoo: Goliaths of the insect world 22 November 2017 Giant stick insects and double helix slides are just a few of the latest additions to the Otago Museum's $2.5 million revamp of the former Discovery World Tropical Forest which will open next month. The public will be let in the doors of the Tuhura Otago Community Trust Science Centre on December 16 after four years of planning and five months of construction. It will include more than 45 new "science interactives'' and a refreshed Tropical Forest butterfly house. The digitally interactive Beautiful Science Gallery and Perpetual Guardian Planetarium, both of which were both completed in December 2015 during stage one of the project, will become part of the centre. Tuhura Science Centre manager Sam Botting said staff were "radiating with passion'' and this would be reflected in the experience visitors could expect. The Tropical Forest would house more than 1000 exotic butterflies and a variety of other species including tarantulas, terrapins and birds. Its newest residents were four female Goliath stick insects, native to northern Australia, which arrived last week from Wellington Zoo. Museum living environments communicator Eden Gray said the creatures could grow up to 30cm long and could still reproduce in the absence of a male. They would be mostly held in a glass enclosure, but the museum would hopefully get them out for visitor interactions, she said. Museum project manager Margot Deveraux said the new centre was "starting to really come to life''. "With the last of the [German made] Huttinger interactives currently being installed, we can finally see what was imagined in the earlier stages of planning.''
