Here on our MTU Campus we believe in the need to preserve and restoration of our natural environment, for the benefit society and nature. Our role as educators is to educate, raise awareness of the climate emergency and to support our Student and Staff Community in this task.
In 2017 we undertook to map our campus biodiversity to establish and record what we had. This provided us a very strong baseline from which we were able to develop a supportive and restorative plan of initiatives and actions.
This survey was followed in 2018/19 by a very impressive research module by our Environmental Engineering Students.
The results and recommendations of this research have been used to formulate our biodiversity plan.
Excerpts from the Student Biodiversity Research Module 2019
- Incorporated trees, felled for the new LRC Building, around campus in the form of art, benches, or outdoor classrooms.
- The placing of bird boxes around campus to house the birds.
- The placing of bird feeders and bird baths around campus to help attract birds and to improve the health of existing birds.
- MTU should limit their use of pesticides to a minimum.
- Existing green areas should be allowed to grow and cut using either a one-cut meadow or a 6-week meadow.
- Organise a tree planting day of native Irish trees, where students and staff alike can. Gather, gendering a sense of community & promote biodiversity on campus.
In line with our plan the planting of 1,000 native Irish trees species works on campus began in 2018 with the planting of the first 100 trees. Since then, we have gone on to plant a further 200 and by 2022 end we will have planted 412 in total.
Natural potted plants started to be used in 2018 for our Graduations Ceremonies and post conferring these were planted out by our students.
Each year since 2018 we have planted out the flowers used for our annual graduations celebrations to mark the years those graduates have spent us and for them to leave a lasting legacy for their environment. This is a commitment our Graduations Committee has made and we continue the this tradition each year, as supporting our Bee population on campus is part of our restoration program.
