Best of our wild blogs: 19 Apr 09


Meeting with Resorts World
on the Midnight Monkey Monitor blog

Common Flameback’s strange death
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Singapore Animal Welfare (SAW) Symposium 2009
on Otterman speaks

Life History of the Green Imperial
on the Butterflies of Singapore blog

Buff-rumped Woodpecker foraging
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Corals of the Great Reef part two
on the wonderful creation blog

Mangroves of Admiralty Park
on the wild shores of singapore blog and blooming nipah

Juvenile Giant Mudskipper
on Otterman speaks


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Mango season hits Singapore streets

Fruit from roadside trees will be harvested for charity; bumper crop due to extended dry weather
Shuli Sudderuddin, Straits Times 19 Apr 09;

While some people are wilting during the current hot, dry spell, it has been 'raining' mangos - from the roadside trees.

So much so that the National Parks Board (NParks) will have a harvest, for the first time, for charity.

Other flowering trees and shrubs have also been lush, but mango trees across the island are 'fruiting particularly heavily this year', said an NParks spokesman.

The mango harvest along Tampines avenues 2 and 4 is said to total 300 to 400 fruits. This Friday, they will be given to NParks' adopted charity, the Handicaps Welfare Association.

In the 1980s, the Government started planting fruit trees to add variety to the landscape. There are now close to 25,000 fruit trees such as coconut, mango, jackfruit and rambutan.

NParks said the bumper crop might have been triggered by the extended dry weather earlier this year.

Professor Richard Thomas Corlett of the National University of Singapore's biological sciences department explained: 'Many trees, both wild and cultivated, are flowering and fruiting more this year.

'In most cases, this is a response to the long dry period in January, when rainfall was 80 to 90 per cent below normal. This has triggered flowering between late March and now in many roadside trees and shrubs.'

He added that plants of the same species need to flower at the same time so that flowers can pollinate one another.

Assistant Professor Shawn Lum of the natural science and science education department of the National Institute of Education said mango trees tend to flower every year at this time, but that drought increases the intensity of the flowering.

There is no consensus on why this is so.

Apart from the roadside trees, those in community gardens are also enjoying an abundant harvest. In 2005, NParks introduced its 'Community In Bloom' project to encourage and facilitate gardening efforts in housing estates.

Over 300 gardening groups have blossomed since, and the fruits of their labour are plentiful this year.

Said the NParks spokesman: 'Most of the fruit harvest will go to the gardeners, while some will be given to charitable groups, residents' committees and residents' associations.'

Yesterday, residents at Tampines Street 12 celebrated the mango harvest from their community garden with a carnival, at which about 300 to 400 mangos were distributed.

Outside of community gardens, however, the plucking of fruit from roadside trees without permission is an offence which carries a fine of up to $5,000. But this has not deterred some people from sampling the forbidden fruit.

IT consultant Darwin Lim, 32, lives along Upper East Coast Road, where at least 20 mango trees are flourishing. He said: 'Sometimes I see people picking them. I think that it's a good thing or all the mangos will go to waste when they fall.'

One resident along Tampines Street 12 was seen plucking mangos from trees with a homemade device - a broom handle with a net on the end. The 60-year-old retiree, who wanted to be known only as Mr Tan, said: 'I've lived here for 20 years and every year the harvest is wasted. There are so many mangos this year. What harm does it do if I take just three or four?'


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Punggol Waterway built by teamwork

Aaron Low, Straits Times 19 Apr 09;

When Mr Samuel Ng heard in 2007 that the Government had plans to transform Punggol Town into a vibrant waterfront town, he could not wait for the makeover.

Yesterday, Mr Ng, 52, a Punggol resident for the last seven years, glimpsed the future at the groundbreaking ceremony of the new Punggol Waterway.

'The waterway will breathe new life and add vibrancy to this sleepy town,' he said. 'It will just be a stone's throw from where I live.'

But the waterway could have been a lost opportunity - if not for the spirit of innovation and teamwork between the Housing Board and Public Utilities Board, said Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.

Indeed, he said the growth of Punggol, like Singapore itself, shows how citizens working as one with 'vision, determination and innovation can overcome the odds to build new communities and radically transform our living environment'.

Speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony, Mr Teo said the transformation of Punggol, an old fishing village, mirrors the experience of Singapore. The nation itself was a fishing village before it made the quantum leap to global city.

In the case of Punggol, the waterway was initially meant to be a 'drain' connecting Sungei Serangoon and Sungei Punggol at each end of Punggol Town.

But when the PUB engineers and the HDB planners discussed the town's development in the Punggol 21 masterplan, they spied an opportunity to build Punggol around this new waterway, he said.

The result? A 4.2km waterway which will flow beside 21,000 units of new public and private housing.

Cutting right through Punggol Town, the waterway is expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Then residents in Punggol and around Singapore can dine alfresco while overlooking the waterway. They can jog on scenic routes, and enjoy watersports such as kayaking.

Praising the HDB and PUB, he said the Government's long-term planning and ability to act on these plans is a key reason for Singapore's success.

'Anyone can have big plans,' he said. 'But working our plan, getting it executed effectively and efficiently is not so easily accomplished.'

Also important is the readiness to modify a plan to suit changing circumstances and to seek synergy, he said, 'while remaining connected to the ground - listening to and attending to our people'.

Indeed, yesterday he invited the people of Punggol to name the waterway.

He was joined by National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan. Also present were Mr Teo's fellow Pasir-Ris Punggol MPs - Mr Charles Chong, Ms Penny Low, Dr Ahmad Magad and Mr Michael Palmer - plus Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Lam Pin Min.

Mr Teo said the new-look Punggol is part of the larger transformation of Singapore's physical landscape that will take place over the next few years.

With the Double Helix Bridge at Marina Bay, the Gardens by the Bay and the integrated resorts being planned and built, the downtown will be rejuvenated.

Similarly, the heartlands will be spruced up, he said. Amenities will be added, such as bigger shopping malls, new hospitals and more luxurious public housing.

On Friday, Mr Mah invited Singaporeans to discover the changes all over the island, including Punggol. They can join a series of events named My New Singapore.

Said Mr Teo: 'We will press on with our efforts to remake our homeland, thus ensuring that Singapore will emerge stronger from the economic downturn when the global economy recovers.'


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Rally against shark fin trade opens in Singapore

AFP Google News 18 Apr 09;

SINGAPORE (AFP) — Animal rights activists launched a campaign in Singapore Saturday against the consumption of shark fin, a status symbol when served at Chinese wedding banquets and dinners.

The Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES) held the rally at Speakers' Corner, Singapore's only venue for outdoor assemblies and demonstrations, subject to strict guidelines.

A large banner bearing the slogan "when sharks die, the oceans die" was displayed at a nearby park close to Singapore's business district.

Louis Ng, ACRES's executive director and founder, told 100 supporters that more than 3,800 sharks were caught every 20 minutes to meet global demand for shark fin, pushing many shark species towards extinction.

"Let us not only say no to shark fins but let us also be advocates for sharks and tell people why we do not, and will not, eat them," Ng said.

One of ACRES's supporters at the rally, physiotherapist Chng Chye Tuan, said he and his wife-to-be had decided against offering shark fin soup to guests at their wedding next month, despite opposition from both sets of parents.

"You can see the impact that humans are having on the ecosystem. The variety of fish is not as much as before," said Chng, referring to observations he had made during diving trips.


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Predators starve as we plunder oceans

Marine giants go hungry as fleets scoop up their prey for our fish suppers. Geoffrey Lean reports

The Independent 19 Apr 09;

Starving sea life – from whales to puffins, tuna to seals – is being found all over the world's oceans, as the food on which it depends is being fished out, startling new evidence shows. And much of the depletion, ironically, is caused by raising captive fish – for the table.

New figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation show that the small fish on which birds and marine mammals feed have become the main target of fishing fleets since stocks of bigger fish have become exhausted. Four times as much of these "prey fish" are now brought to shore as half a century ago, and seven of the world's largest 10 fisheries now go after them.

More than four-fifths of this catch does not go directly to feed people, but is ground up into fish oil and fish meal and increasingly used to raise carnivorous species such as salmon in fish farms. A captive fish needs up to 11b of food to put on a single pound in weight. And, as a result, there is less and less left for its natural predators.

"We have caught most of the big fish and are now going after their food," says Margot Stiles, a marine scientist for Oceana, the leading international sea protection pressure group.

A new report by the group, Hungry Oceans, describes how "scrawny predators – dolphins, sea bass and even whales – have turned up on coastlines all over the world", adding that scientists are finding them and seabirds "emaciated from lack of food, vulnerable to disease and without enough energy to reproduce".


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Interview: David Attenborough on population

The naturalist is frightened by the number of people in the world and says the human race needs to be reduced
Camilla Long, Times Online 19 Apr 09;

Bending gingerly over a deep, green pond in the garden of his home in Richmond, southwest London, Sir David Attenborough and I are inspecting a great crested newt. “Triturus!” he says, pointing. “Look. Looook . . . ” – the bosky voice creeps past gas mark 4 – “he is waaafting his hormones at her. And in a minute . . . ” The animal (unfortunately I had been looking at a reed) flicks in the water. “She’s off! Whuuuhnderful!”

It is the first proper day of spring, and after a short scuffle with the double doors we have come outside “the posh way” – ie, not through the kitchen – cantered briskly onto the lawn, past a large mossy patch on the patio (“Don’t step on that or you’ll end up in a sewer”) and straight up to the pond to see his new toys.

At 82, Attenborough is a vision in taupe, with talcum-powder features, a surprisingly firm handshake and a manner that is occasionally brusque, shading to sarcastic (“Yes, it’s a bird”). His daughter Susan offers me a drink of water, before disappearing into an office. “She lives three-quarters of an hour away,” he says, alighting on a small garden seat. “My wife died 12 years ago, so she comes here and restocks the fridge and, as she puts it elegantly, mucks me out.”

I had been hoping his house would be something like the set of the film Jumanji – parting aspidistras and parakeets going “eek, eek” – but it is in fact a spartan dwelling, with African pots, gently crisping books, Danish furniture and the cool, desiccated hush of a fossil room at the Natural History Museum. He has lived here for 55 years, “although there’s not much wildlife”.

Nevertheless, we are constantly being distracted by robins (“Hello, darling”), butterflies (“Oh gosh, look at that! A blue butterfly. The first of the season”) and blackbirds.

“Turdus merula,” I say. “Well done,” he says, thrilled. You can see how he nearly became a teacher.

Attenborough is not here to discuss wild-life. He is here to discuss humans, and how there are far too many of them. Earlier last week, when it was announced that he had become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), he explained that “there are three times as many people in the world as when I started making television programmes 56 years ago. It is frightening. We can’t go on as we have been. We are seeing the consequences in terms of eco-logy, atmospheric pollution and in terms of space and food production”.

He is the first to admit the problem is a thorny one. “Indeed; indeed it is,” he says, “but we can make sure women have the choice as to whether they have children. If you spread literacy, education, a decent standard of living, the population increase drops. That’s why the notion, the ability, to restrict population growth should be around. I don’t believe women want to have 12 children where eight of them die, as they did in this country 150 years ago. Now they have a choice, and that is the reason we have an almost static population here – if you discount immigration.” But isn’t it a bit too late for all this, now that the global population is nearly 7 billion and rising fast? “Oh yes, yes,” he says.

Besides, what’s the ideal figure for human life on Earth? Attenborough is a little soft-focus on details. “I don’t know how you’d calculate . . . optimum-ness, but certainly, the mere fact of what we’re doing to the natural world makes it perfectly clear we’re way past it. Half the world’s starving.”

He has seen this for himself countless times in “African slums, South American slums. Little kids playing with open sewers, rats, filth, disease, poverty, terrible”. The best number of children is “obviously two and a half”, he adds, laughing. “I don’t know about the right number.” He wouldn’t put a limit on the number of children a woman may have, as they do in China, but “obviously, having a large number of children is putting a strain on things”.

So what’s a large number? Attenborough has two: Susan, who is unmarried, and Robert, an anthropologist, who has two children. The great naturalist pauses to think. “Five. The fact is,” he sighs, “the human race ought to be reduced.”

You can’t just get rid of people, though. “No, no,” he says. “Well, you say that, but you do get rid of people – there are famines, and people are very good at getting rid of each other. I’m not for a micro-second suggesting that’s a good thing, but there are all sorts of diseases and disasters that can happen to humanity.”

So if we don’t take control of the problem ourselves, then nature or self-interest will. None of this is really applicable to Britain, of course. Here the problem is not overpopulation, but the ageing population.

“Yes, it presents great economic problems,” says Attenborough. “It’s a question of the lesser of two evils.” He will be 83 next month: presumably he wouldn’t like it if there was no one to look after him? “Of course you wouldn’t, because you’re selfish . . . It’s that blue butterfly again!” He pauses. “What was I saying?”

Keeping the population down. Getting old. Closing our borders? “We have to keep our borders open: it’s a worldwide problem,” he says. “You want a free movement of people round the world because that’s the only way you’re going to stop wars. Because if you put walls around yourself, you tend to think you’re the only people who are important, and that people on the other side of the wall are the enemy. And you only realise they aren’t the enemy if you travel among them.”

The most charming people he has met, he says, are “the Cambodians”, although he doesn’t like going back to places, because “it’s not as it was. I went to Bali in the Fifties and there was only one hotel on the whole island. I slept on the beach, with turtles coming up and nesting, and now on that beach there are a dozen 30-storey hotels. So going back is not much . . .” He looks sad.

How the world has changed since his youth. The son of a university principal, he says his childhood in Leicester was “idyllic, a time in the Thirties when you could just get on your bicycle and be out in the country in half an hour, go youth-hostelling for three weeks at 14 and nobody saw any problems”. These days, he adds, “you have to go a long way to get rid of human beings and see the natural world as it is”. He knows he’s been lucky.

Even getting into television was pure chance. “I was a trainee at Alexandra Palace. There were two studios and everyone did everything. They were short of an interviewer one day – ‘Would you do it?’ ‘Sure’.” The rest is natural history.

“However, I happened to discover 40 years later that they had concluded, ‘He could be a perfectly pleasant chap, might be a perfectly good producer, but he shoul-dn’t be used again as an interviewer on camera because his teeth are too big’.”

Attenborough says he is not bothered about his looks – “You’d like to think people are impressed by what you said, not what you look like” – but I think he just comes from that sort of background: long on heroic achievement, short on emotion. I can see from some of the pictures in his autobiography, Life on Air, that he was very handsome when he was younger, I say.

“Is the tense right?” he titters quietly.

Generally, he is extremely modest, refusing to acknowledge his status as a beloved icon at all. A few years back he was voted “the most trusted celebrity” by a magazine.

“Did you see the criteria?” he explodes. “The people they considered were rather bogus, with reputations because of the mass media.” People only really watch his programmes for the animals, he says. “If I didn’t have king penguins, birds of paradise, gibbons or gorillas . . . ”

At first, he tells me he’s not bothered about getting old – “I ignore it,” he says, stiffly – but later he admits the only thing he would change about his life would be to shed some years. He certainly doesn’t like the idea of not working. He’ll go on “until the voice goes. Voices do go. You get croaky. Teeth are quite important: if you lose your teeth, you sound funny”.

So he’s doing some radio scripts for the summer, and working on the natural history series The Frozen Planet. Next month he is off to the Antarctic – “and after that, the Arctic”, he says gleefully. It’ll all be wonderful, “provided nothing goes wrong. In the Arctic, if it goes wrong, you’re not just in mild trouble. In the jungle you can get lost and all sorts of silly things and walk out the other side, but in the Antarctic . . . Dropping a glove can mean losing your fingers”. Besides, he says, “I’m not doing that Captain Scott stuff – you have to be posh to a degree.”

He doesn’t strike me as the sort to demand first class – but how does he keep his carbon footprint down with all that travel-ling? “Well, I don’t see what . . . I don’t think . . . You have to be realistic about this. Being sensible with energy means only use it when you need to. You can’t suddenly suggest we’re going to stop moving around.”

Does he worry about infirmity? “Oh yes, of course. Losing your marbles. It’s happening to my contemporaries. I can think of all kinds of inadequacies, like not being able to put down a coherent sentence. I’ve had that all my life, but I now tell myself that it’s because I’m old.”

Also, “My knees are rubbish,” he says. “I can’t climb trees and look for birds’ nests as much as I used to” – I’m impressed that’s still on the menu at all – “but there you go. If you’re sitting here in your eighties, you can’t very well say that everyone should be snuffed out in their seventies.”

What is his position on euthanasia? “Gosh . . . I think it is desperate that people with terminal illness and in extreme pain shouldn’t be able to control their future. There should be legal clauses sufficient for it not to be abused, however.”

Would he consider it for himself? “It seems dreadful even to speculate,” he says.

His older brother, Richard – Lord Attenborough, the film-maker – is recovering from a coma after a fall at home. “Oh, he’s getting on reasonably but it’s a long job,” he says. “We’re very” – he corrects himself – “prettyclose; I go and see him in hospital fairly regularly. Three times in the past five days.”

I’ve always been slightly astonished that Dickie and David are even related. “We’ve enjoyed one another’s careers,” he says, “but neither of us would wish to have the other one’s. I wouldn’t be in a feature film for all the tea in China. But then he wouldn’t want to go travelling in the Borneo rainforest.”

The younger Attenborough lives alone, with no pets. When the children were young the family kept “snakes, monkeys, lemurs, chameleons, monkfish . . . all sorts. Now, if you live by yourself, you can’t properly deal with them”.

Jane, his wife of more than 40 years, died suddenly in 1997 from a brain haemor-rhage. He doesn’t talk about this, and he certainly doesn’t want to write about it. “I don’t think I’m very good at it; I find it quite hard, being mawkish,” he says. “And why would you want other people to know about it?”In his autobiography, he covers his marriage in minimal space. Does he miss her? “Oh come on. Forty years.” He looks at me like an angry koala. “What else do you want while I’m at it?”

A photographer appears, just in time, to take his picture. “Hate it,” he says, springing up. “Don’t you?”

If tonight is an ordinary night, he’ll be at home – perhaps watching Porridge or Yes Minister, playing the piano or thinking about the next development in the garden.

There’s something stoic about his existence. Take his attitude to money: he is “hopeless”, he says. “But I have my spending money.” He pauses. “I am very like the Queen, from many points of view.”

Life on Air (revised and updated edition) by David Attenborough is published by BBC Books on 7 May, priced £20. Copies can be ordered for £18 including postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0845 271 2135


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Just £4bn will save a generation from starvation, says UN

G8 agriculture ministers try to halt 'spiral of hunger' created by drought, falling prices and credit crunch
Geoffrey Lean, The Independent 19 Apr 09;

Agriculture ministers from the world's richest countries are holding an unprecedented meeting this weekend as the United Nations warns that hunger threatens to "spiral out of control" in the wake of the financial crisis.

The three-day meeting, which opened in Italy yesterday, will address a growing food crisis as harvests threaten to slump at a time when record numbers of people are already hungry. Crops are being hit by a combination of bad weather, falling food prices and farmers' being refused credit to buy seeds and fertilisers.

It is the first time that the agriculture ministers of the G8 leading economies have held such a meeting, and they have invited their counterparts from China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Egypt to join them in Treviso "to work out a common route to lead us out of the crisis and respond to the world food emergency".

The UN's World Food Programme warned: "As the global financial crisis deepens, hunger and malnutrition are likely to increase as incomes fall and unemployment rises. The world is at a critical juncture where we risk watching hunger spiral out of control. We cannot afford to lose the next generation."

The crisis began even before the start of the credit crunch, at a time of record harvests. About two years ago food prices started to rise abruptly, despite the bumper crops, mainly because of the increased use of corn to make biofuel, particularly in the US, and increasing meat consumption – which mops up grain supplies to feed livestock – by the rising middle classes in developing countries such as India and China. Prices of wheat and corn doubled in a year – and rice more than trebled – leading to the first steep and sustained rise in hunger in decades.

A record crop last year did not help much. It brought the cost of grain down in rich countries, which saw most of the increased production, but not in developing ones where the poor live, partly because their currencies fell against the dollar in which international prices are set.

Yet it led to farmers in Europe and the US planting less this year because they can expect lower returns at a time when it is harder than ever to get loans. The US Department of Agriculture reported this month that 7 per cent less land is being used to grow wheat, in a country that helps to supply 100 nations around the world.

China – which feeds a fifth of the world's people off just a 10th of its cropland – did increase sowing but, in another cruel twist of fate, was then hit by its worst drought in nearly 70 years, cutting yields by up to 40 per cent. And drought has also led to a similar slump in another of the world's great grain-growing regions, Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil.

All this means, says the Food and Agriculture Organisation, that harvests are set to fall his year "in most of the world's major producers". The UN adds that it would cost $6bn (£4bn) to stave off the resulting hunger, which would be "relatively inexpensive compared to the trillion-dollar rescue packages designed to save financial institutions".


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Climate refugees flee from rising sea in Pacific

Kristina Stefanova, The Washington Times 19 Apr 09;

MELBOURNE, Australia | Rising sea levels blamed on climate change are taking a toll on island nations in the South Pacific, with the world's first climate refugees beginning a migration that is likely to continue for decades to come.

Inhabitants of parts of New Guinea and Tuvalu have already been forced to moved from low-lying areas.

New Zealand has agreed to accept migrants from Tuvalu, which experts think will be completely submerged by the middle of the century. Canada is funding the relocation of residents from parts of Vanuatu affected by global warming.

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization warned in a recent report that the Pacific region is particularly vulnerable.

It warned of coastal communities already being inundated by rising seas, the loss of wetlands and coral bleaching, as well as an increase in disease and heat-related mortality resulting from climate change.

"Communities all over the Pacific are alarmed at coastal erosion and the advancing sea levels," said Diane McFadzien, the South Pacifics regional climate change coordinator with the World Wildlife Fund. "We are already seeing signs of whole villages having to relocate ... or important cultural sites such as burial grounds in Fiji being eroded."

The Pacific islands comprise 22 nations with 7 million residents.

The rising sea and eroding beaches caused the recent forced displacement of the people of the Carteret Islands, about 70 miles northeast of Papua New Guinea. The islands' 2,500 residents are moving to one of Papua New Guineas larger towns, Bougainville.

Extreme weather has increased in frequency and ferocity in recent years in Papua New Guinea. A flood in Oro Province in November 2007 killed 70 people and destroyed nearly all roads and bridges.

In the Indian Ocean, the Maldives, a chain of 1,200 islands and coral atolls that sits about 6 feet above sea level, has long been a favorite honeymoon destination. Estimates released at the Copenhagen International Climate Congress in February say the sea could swallow most or all of the islands by the year 2100.


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