Life History of the Large Dart
from Butterflies of Singapore
Flaring up at Pulau Bukom
from wild shores of singapore
TeamSeagrass at Pulau Semakau
from teamseagrass and wild shores of singapore
Where has all the water gone?
from Rhinomania
A male Dark-necked Tailorbird
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Immature Ashy Minivet in a mixed species foraging flock
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Jamie Ee Wen Wei Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
Visitors to Underwater World Singapore in Sentosa can safely swim with the dolphins or dive with the sharks.
There is also a sharks' nursery pool, where visitors get to feed over 10 baby sharks like the bamboo shark and nurse shark using a feeding stick.
These activities at the attraction are safe, said its spokesman, because visitors will be accompanied by experienced trainers and staff.
She stressed that the attraction's sharks and dolphins cannot be compared to larger marine animals like whales in terms of size and strength.
The spokesman was commenting on last Wednesday's fatal incident in SeaWorld, Florida, in which a killer whale being given a rub before a watching audience suddenly grabbed its trainer and dragged her underwater. The woman drowned.
She described the Florida incident as unfortunate, adding that at Underwater World, animals are assessed on their consistency and stability in their training behaviour before they are involved in the visitors' programmes.
Singapore's other animal attractions also emphasised that the safety of visitors and their staff are of paramount concern, and that there are safety measures to ensure harm-free interactions with the animals.
At Jurong BirdPark, Night Safari and the Singapore Zoo - all part of Wildlife Reserves Singapore - a total of 115 species of mammals, birds and reptiles are involved in animal shows. These are trained to carry out certain actions through positive reinforcement, which rewards them with treats and praises. Those that display aggression are never used in the shows, said Mr Kumar Pillai, Night Safari's assistant director of zoology.
While rare, there have been at least 10 animal-related accidents involving visitors and trainers since the zoo opened 37 years ago. The most terrifying one took place on Nov 13, 2008, when cleaner Nordin Montong was mauled to death by Omar, a white tiger, after he climbed into the big cats' enclosure. His death was ruled a suicide.
The most serious incident in which an animal attacked its trainer happened in 2001, when Chawang, a bull elephant, gored Mr Gopal Krishnan, his keeper of 18 years. Mr Gopal was in hospital for nearly two months, with fractured ribs and a punctured lung. He is back at work as a zookeeper.
Chawang was later retrained and is now the star of the Night Safari.
Mr Pillai said large animals like hyenas and wolves that may be dangerous are managed under protected contact, which means there is no physical contact between them and their trainers. For bull elephants like Chawang, trainers use a 2m long pole with a ball to direct and move the animals.
Mr Pillai added that the attraction has safety procedures in place that all its zookeepers are familiar with. Zookeepers are assessed yearly on their knowledge of these regulations. Emergency drills are also conducted twice a year to ensure that staff are familiar with the procedures.
Only experienced keepers are allowed to care for or train animals. They also work on a 'buddy' system. Zoo curators are on hand to consult on animals due to appear in shows. Trainers are also instructed to not make sudden or loud movements that can startle animals under their charge.
Ed Zieralski, Union-Tribune, Sign On San Diego 27 Feb 10;
La Jolla Kayak Fishing’s Jim Sammons has paddled within casting distance of a pod of killer whales, and that was close enough to the orcas for a man who has had some incredible close encounters at sea with fish and mammals.
In 2008, Sammons and his TV production crew got between two pods of killer whales off Alaska while filming the kayak-fishing movie “Game On,” now a hit TV series on the World Fishing Network.
“We saw a pod of killer whales approaching from about a mile away, and we had another pod of killer whales between us and the shoreline,” Sammons said. “We decided to let the ones coming in get close. Then two big males in each of the pods breached, one about 100 yards from us. They breached three times, just to let us know they were bigger than us. I was paddling, but what you don’t see is I was paddling backwards. It was the most incredible sight I’ve ever seen in nature.”
I mention Sammons’ encounter today in the wake of the tragic death of SeaWorld orca trainer Dawn Brancheau. The 40-year-old veteran trainer was pulled by her braided hair into the Orlando SeaWorld mammal tank, dragged and thrashed to death by Sea World’s superstar orca and breeding machine, Tilikum. Brancheau’s is the third human death linked to Tilikum. I guess SeaWorld doesn’t have a three-strike rule for its big-water inmates.
And then there’s the unfortunate name of the program in which Brancheau was killed: “Lunch with Shamu.”
Sammons and I, and many others, agree that these killer whales do not belong in oversized aquariums, shown off by SeaWorld for fun and big profit. I authored a blog Thursday for the U-T Web site and linked it to Facebook. The comments on Facebook remain 100 percent against keeping orcas captive.
“Would you make a goldfish live in a shot glass?” waterwoman Michelle Woo-Bowman commented. “Why keep an orca in a tiny tank?”
Woo-Bowman, an avid surfboard angler, posted information about a YouTube video that depicts another SeaWorld orca going airborne in a tank for an unsuspecting pelican during a Shamu show. The video is amazing. Music plays in the background, and although some members of the crowd clearly are horrified, there’s also laughter as killer whales take turns ripping the poor pelican apart in a feeding frenzy. It’s a long video and even shows one of the trainers swimming out to gather the bird’s remains — wings, carcass, entrails and such.
To me, keeping a killer whale in a super-sized fish tank is no different from what these other warped nature lovers do by keeping mountain lions in so-called “sanctuaries.” In the case of killer whales and killer mountain lions, you’re taking apex predators, killing machines, and taking away the things they need most, freedom to roam and freedom to hunt and kill.
One of the witnesses of an earlier Orlando SeaWorld show starring Tilikum on Wednesday said it appeared the big mammal wasn’t taking commands and appeared upset, agitated. Geez, hard to figure why a 21-foot, 12,000-pound sea creature would be upset about being kept on land in a tank and ordered to perform for food.
There aren’t many common ground issues for me and animal rights activists, but ripping SeaWorld for keeping orcas in fish bowls is one of them.
There are other issues, such as SeaWorld’s practice of rescuing sea lions and seals and then placing them back out near shore, where they cause huge problems for recreational and commercial fishermen. SeaWorld has always had its head in its stern on this one.
I remember another incident with San Diego SeaWorld in 1981, when it attempted to keep alive a great white shark in captivity. The shark lasted 11 days before SeaWorld officials realized it didn’t like being in a glass bowl. That has been tried at other aquariums, but great whites never last long.
Finally, Sammons told me of a focus group he was part of that was asked to explore future attractions at San Diego SeaWorld. Just when I thought this group couldn’t be any more obtuse, it showed it can.
“One of the ideas they had was to do a whale shark lagoon,” Sammons said. “There would be rides and the whole deal to see the whale shark. I was the only dissenting one in the room who thought it was a very bad idea. That’s just wrong. It’s bad enough they have the huge mammals in tanks. Imagine a whale shark, the largest living fish species, in a tank.”
If SeaWorld can make a buck on it, count on that group to do it, even if it means sacrificing dedicated trainers in the process, even if it means taking Tiger-sized public relations hits.
Liz Jones, Mail Online 27 Feb 10;
I’m in a rubber dinghy two miles off the Cornish coast. I can see splashing in the distance, and we cut our engine.
Within seconds, two dolphins speed towards the boat. They have recognised not only the sound of the engine, but also the shock of blond hair of my guide, marine ecologist Duncan Jones, who takes tourists out each day to observe the wildlife in the bay off Penzance.
The dolphins – whom Duncan in turn recognises as Cookie and Sleeky, two juvenile male bottlenoses who live in a civil partnership pod – start showing off.
They show me their pale tummies, they perform back flips and they swim, at incredible speed – up to 30knots, or 35mph – straight at us, swerving at the last minute to disappear beneath the boat.
This, according to Duncan, is their idea of a joke. Dolphins have a sense of humour?
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘Like us, they are capable of abstract thought. By studying the noises they make, scientists have found that dolphins even have names for each other.
‘They form strong family bonds, using other adults to babysit, for example.’
Dolphins are incredibly tactile, too, and one of their means of communication and reassurance is flipper rubbing – a bit like hand holding.
They are just like us, then? ‘Not really. They have learned to live in peace and harmony with their environment. They are just full of the joy of being alive.’
Dolphins and whales in the wild are indeed incredibly optimistic creatures, according to Margaux Dodds, co-founder of the Marine Connection dolphin and whale welfare charity.
In captivity, though, it’s a different story. In dolphinariums, forced to perform tricks for food, the animals have been known to ram their heads against the sides, knocking themselves out, trying to end their torment.
Animals enclosed in ‘sea pens’ for all those ‘swimming with dolphins’ holidays, and no longer able to use sonar to find food, become bored and depressed, often entangling themselves in nets to drown.
I have taken my wet suit along for my boat ride in Cornwall, in the naive hope I’ll be able to get into the water and swim with these amazing animals. But Duncan tells me this is against the rules.
‘These animals are sociable, but they can become stressed by humans if we force ourselves on them, not to mention the grave danger of cross-species infection.’
There are no longer any dolphinariums in the UK – the last closed in the early Nineties – but Thomson and Virgin Holidays, to name just two tour operators, are actively selling ‘swimming with dolphins’ holidays worldwide.
When approached, the only response from Virgin so far has been a terse: ‘Swimming with dolphins holidays offer a valuable experience for our customers’.
But Margaux Dodds says: ‘Any holiday that promises you will interact with dolphins means you will be swimming with captive dolphins, and perpetuating this cruel trade.
‘Many believe these dolphins are born in captivity. But wild captures to supply facilities are still common, with some coming from the notorious annual drive hunts in Japan. Demand from marine parks makes this a lucrative business for dolphin traders.’
In the Solomon Islands a ban on captures was overturned by the government to allow dolphins to be taken to supply the Atlantis Palm resort in Dubai.
No one has been allowed near the dolphins in Dubai, but there are unsubstantiated reports that four have already died.
Last week, the inevitable happened. Animal trainer (I hate that word) Dawn Brancheau was killed when an orca, or killer whale, the largest member of the dolphin family, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her under the water.
Newspaper reports made much of the fact that Ms Brancheau had known the orca, Tilly, for 16 years but I could only think, my God, that intelligent animal had been performing circus tricks for her for nearly two decades!
He had been captured, aged two, in the waters of Iceland, and has been living in a glorified bathtub for 30 years. No wonder he finally snapped.
The animal has been spared by his owners (hate that word; let’s call them what they really are: jailers), Seaworld Orlando, not through any sense of compassion, but because he is a lucrative source of revenue.
Back in our boat off the coast of Cornwall, Duncan Jones switches on the engine, and as we point towards the shore, Cookie and Sleeky ride our bows, grinning widely, deliberately trying to splash me, before whizzing off to investigate another boat leaving the harbour.
I can’t help wondering why we think we have the right to exploit and humiliate such delightful creatures. Surely it’s time to end what is the modern-day equivalent of bear-baiting.
Come out and play
Nicholas Yong and Magdalen Ng Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
Kite flying, cricket, football, frisbee and flying model aeroplanes. These are just some of the weekend activities happening on more than 300 plots of vacant state land available to the public for social and recreational use since 2003.
The plots cover an area of 582ha or 895 football fields. Members of the public need not book or pay to use the open spaces.
Many are located near housing estates. And casual users as well as organised groups have been making full use of them.
At the open field along Sengkang East Way, opposite Anchorvale Community Centre, about 100 people turn up every weekend to fly kites.
The skies are dotted with kites of various sizes, shapes and colours in the evenings.
Service engineer Mohamed Sulhaimi, 37, comes from Jurong West to fly kites with his three young children.
'I drive there two to three times a month because it's not easy to find such a big open space to fly kites. Everyone is friendly and helps to keep a lookout for the children, so that's nice,' he says.
Housewife Ginnie Cheng, 29, says that with Compass Point mall nearby, toilets and other amenities are easily available.
Over at Compassvale Road, an ultimate frisbee league involving more than 600 players has been held for the past 10 weeks.
Ultimate frisbee is a fast-paced mish-mash of netball, basketball and rugby rules, played by two 7-a-side teams.
Frisbee player Sree Ganesh, 25, a member of Chuckies club, says: 'This place is great for a big-scale tournament.'
Before 2003, many of these plots of land carried 'No Trespassing' signs. Following an initiative started by Senior Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs, Associate Professor Ho Peng Kee, to open up fields for the public, the signs now declare that the sites are for 'casual community and recreational use'.
Singaporeans have long been creative about using the limited space available, judging by the stories on reclaimland.sg, a project started by four Nanyang Technological University students last year.
The stories include that of a barber who obtained a special licence to cut hair in an alley after he was evicted from his shop.
One of the students, writer Justin Zhuang, 26, noted: 'Land is so scarce here that there is a constant struggle between people and the state over how land is used. But we hear that the authorities are less strict now (about enforcement).'
And it is not just Singaporeans who are enjoying the use of state land.
Over at Tanah Merah MRT, Indian workers from Tamil Nadu play cricket on the field along New Upper Changi Road.
Safety supervisor Anthony Fernandoss, 24, joins a dozen men every Saturday after work at 5pm. The field is near his workplace in Bedok North and his dormitory in Loyang.
When asked how they all got together, he says with a smile: 'I call my friend, you call your friend.'
Elsewhere, in the shadow of Raffles Hospital and Parkview Square, about 20 men play football on the field on weekends.
Dispatch rider Remy Rahymie, 31, says they play there because 'it's free'.
While some in the group were school friends, others met through their mutual love for another sport, scooter riding.
Some Thai workers 'turned up one day and asked if they could join in' and they have now become regulars, says freelance safety officer Redwan Sumayani, 30.
Their bond extends off the field too - many of them will be attending Mr Remy's forthcoming wedding.
Along Sengkang East Way, opposite Anchorvale Community Centre
Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
It is 2pm on a sweltering Sunday afternoon, but kite enthusiasts are taking up spots on the open fields along Sengkang East Way.
Some are experts, flying kites more than 1m long. Others are children and beginners, who have difficulty getting their smaller kites up in the air.
But soon, colourful kites in many shapes and sizes dot the sky.
Amid all the action, an ice-cream vendor enjoys brisk business.
Picnicking families increase in number as the evening approaches and the time to reel in those high-flying kites draws near.
Compassvale Road
Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
More than 600 ultimate frisbee players have been coming to the field here every weekend to take part in a 10-week frisbee league tournament.
They come from all over Singapore, including Joice Tan, 19, who lives in central Singapore. 'This place is quite convenient because it's next to the LRT station,' says the student.
Although the contest ended last Sunday, you can catch more frisbee action when the players return to the field for the finals next month.
Tanah Merah Kechil Link (next to Tanah Merah MRT)
Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
A cricket bat, some tennis balls and some improvised poles are all that is needed to bring Indian workers from different workplaces and dormitories together.
'We all love cricket,' says safety supervisor Jalaluddin, 28, who has been working here for the last four years.
About a dozen men gather on weekends to play the game that is almost an obsession on the Asian sub-continent. As some play in pants and long-sleeved shirts, others wait their turn on the sidelines, listening to Tamil songs on their mobile phones.
Next to Parkview Square, at the junction of Beach Road and Ophir Road
Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
About 20-odd men have a kickabout every weekend at this field near Bugis MRT. While some of their wives and children watch from the sidelines, the men play beneath darkening skies.
It matters little that the field is bisected by a deep drain and littered with cigarette butts, cans and plastic bottles. Neither do they worry about the danger of the ball being miskicked onto the road.
Only a sudden thunderstorm interrupts the game, causing a scramble for shelter. The game resumes as soon as the rain stops.
Goh Chin Lian, Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
Chinese and Indian foreign workers are the focus of a series of TV commercials aimed at licking the habit of littering and spitting.
And to bridge the cultural gap, the ads take a leaf from Stephen Chow gongfu movies and Kollywood-styled comedies made popular by the Tamil movie industry.
The ads, commissioned by the National Environment Agency (NEA), were first aired in November last year and most recently over the Chinese New Year holidays.
NEA figures show that Singaporeans still make up the larger proportion of litterbugs caught, rising from 62 per cent in 2008 to 71 per cent last year. The share of foreigners has fallen correspondingly from 38 per cent to 29 per cent over the same period.
But the number of litterbugs is still large for both groups. Of those caught last year, 27,572 were Singaporeans and 11,059 were foreigners.
The NEA videos have even made their way to YouTube.
Though they differ in style, they target the pockets of foreign workers. They list the fines for first-time offenders, which are $300 for littering and $150 for spitting. And they tag on this pragmatic message: Is being fined the way to waste your hard-earned money?
The NEA told The Sunday Times: 'Survey findings show that most foreign workers are not aware of the fines.
'As the fine will constitute a large proportion of their salary, it serves as a huge deterrent and thus a motivating factor for not littering or spitting.'
The commercials are part of a comprehensive outreach and education programme to cover both Singaporeans and foreign workers, it added.
Conscious that people may resist a hard sell, the NEA said it chose a 'non-authoritarian' approach for its campaign.
The gongfu-styled ad is set in a back alley in Geylang, featuring a Chinese national who coughs and spits on the ground. His girlfriend wipes her mouth with a tissue and throws it away.
A local man lunges forward and catches the spit with his newspaper, while a local woman launches herself off a wall into the air and catches the tissue with two fingers.
The same message is conveyed in Tamil in a Kollywood-inspired ad, where an Indian man is chased by three other Indian men for tossing a water bottle on the ground.
Mr John Gee, president of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group for migrant workers, does not think the targeted approach is offensive.
Littering has been recognised as a problem among foreign workers, he said.
Smokers, youth and mums too
Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
A new anti-littering campaign is being planned for the middle of this year.
It will target smokers, youth and mothers, the National Environment Agency (NEA) said.
It wants mums to set a good example for their children by placing litter into a bin, according to NEA tender documents obtained by The Sunday Times.
Youths below 35 years old are also a focus because they are prone to littering, based on the NEA's surveys of littering behaviour and enforcement statistics.
Previous studies also show that one in five of Singapore's population litters.
While people are aware that they should not do so, they are unaware of the harmful effects, the NEA said.
It indicated that the campaign should adopt a creative strategy 'that is less authoritarian and top-down' to motivate the target groups.
The campaign dovetails with existing efforts to take the anti-littering message to schoolchildren and the community, including recruiting youths as ambassadors.
The NEA also engages organisers of public events such as marathons, the River Hongbao celebrations and the National Day Parade to keep them litter-free.
Its efforts are bearing fruit.
The average number of plastic bags left behind on each 40-seater bench at the National Day Parade fell from five to eight in 2005, to one to two last year.
PUB opening up new legal fishing spots as the number of anglers caught fishing illegally grows
Teh Joo Lin, Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
At least once a week, often under the cover of darkness, a 26-year-old undergraduate goes fishing at the MacRitchie Reservoir, casting his line at an illegal spot.
The young man, who calls himself a 'professional poacher', takes a 11/2-hour trek through forests with friends, risking snake bites and being caught by park rangers.
Asked why he does not fish at an approved spot at the reservoir, he replied: 'No fish to catch. More and more are fishing illegally because there's a lack of places.'
Indeed, the number of people being netted for illegal fishing is growing. Last year, 488 summons were issued, up from 399 in 2008. In 2007, 336 tickets were handed out.
The infringements mainly concern fishing outside designated areas and using live bait that can pollute the water.
Noting the growing interest in fishing, however, the authorities have also hatched new fishing spots to hook anglers.
A PUB spokesman said another two spots - at the Pandan Reservoir and Jurong Lake - will be up by the second half of the year.
Currently, designated areas exist in the MacRitchie, Lower Peirce, Upper and Lower Seletar, Kranji and Bedok reservoirs, as well as in Jurong Lake.
The new development is part of a long-term blueprint to change waterways into 'beautiful and vibrant community spaces'.
The spokesman said: 'In the future, instead of designating grounds, we will allow fishing at most parts of the reservoir except where it is designated as a non-fishing zone.'
Fishing enthusiasts say some break the law because of overfishing in the sanctioned areas.
Mr Samuel Liu, 28, who runs a commercial fishing pond at Bottle Tree Park in Yishun, said: 'After so long, there's no more fish there. Some people also lay nets, which end up 'spooking off' the fish in the entire area. So people will go and find new spots.'
Another keen angler, lecturer Benjamin Gay, 36, pointed out that the fishes are 'all hiding at the illegal spots'.
But will more legal spots rein in illegal practices?
Sports Fishing Association president Chin Chi Khiong said some anglers are thrill-seekers who deliberately look for spots unknown to others.
'Humans are greedy by nature. If they can catch 100 a day, if they can catch 1,000 a day... very few people will think, 'It's enough'.'
Still, zoo curator Ang Cheng Chye said increasing the number of fishing grounds is a good idea.
This will help 'reduce the likelihood of anglers carving their way through the forests', he said, adding that the forays damage vegetation and disturb wildlife.
He suggested the use of fishing permits to govern the numbers and sizes of fish that can be removed from the reservoirs.
'However, this requires increased manpower to police the areas to prevent abuse of the system,' he said, adding that educating the anglers is also important.
Anglers do not think freeing up more spots for fishing spells bad news for the eco-diversity balance.
For one thing, the younger set of anglers prefer to practise catch-and-release with artificial lures.
No pollutive live bait is used and, as the catch is returned to the water, there is also no danger of depleting stocks, which can hurt the eco-system.
Mr Gay, who usually releases his catch, explained that the thrill lies in the fight with the fish. 'Those who do catch and release have been fishing for a long time. Bringing the fish home and cooking it is no big deal to them.
'You see the fish swim away... It's quite a nice thing to do.'
Some anglers intent on getting better bites are also turning to commercial fishing ponds. There are an estimated five to seven of these here.
Mr N. Mohan, 51, was at one such place at Bottle Tree Park in Yishun two weeks ago.
Speaking after he snared a red-tailed catfish weighing more than 7kg, the self-employed man said: 'I have tried fishing in a reservoir, but it's not exciting.
'Most likely, the designated areas are not infested with fish. Unless you want to go there and fish illegally. But why break the law?'
Additional reporting by Ng Hui Ying
Debby Kwong, Straits Times 28 Feb 10;
Residents complain, but when the pest control companies act, it can be a sorry sight.
Teacher Akiko Ng was on her way to her home in Block 51, Sims Drive when she saw a man pick up a dark object to put into a rubbish bag.
'It looked like a bird. But I dismissed it and thought it was probably a bottle,' Ms Ng, 33, said.
But then the 'object' struggled and flew off. She found out that the man, a pest controller, was clearing away the dead pigeons his team had poisoned.
About 10 pigeons were on the ground, she recalled. It was the first time she had seen pigeons being culled after living in the estate for 31/2 years.
Another Sims Drive resident, Mr Bernard Tan, had written to The Straits Times Forum page last December.
His letter had urged the authorities to adopt a more humane way of controlling the pigeon numbers.
'I was horrified to see several pigeons convulsing,' he wrote, adding that children who had witnessed the scene were 'visibly disturbed' too.
Ms Ng wondered too if there were alternatives to poisoning the pigeons.
In response, Mr Ng Cheng Tee, a senior property manager at Jalan Besar Town Council, which covers Sims Drive, said feeding of the birds was part of the pigeon pest problem. 'We've always urged residents to refrain from feeding the birds,' he said.
He added that there was a signboard on this in the open spaces as well as posters on notice boards at the town council.
He told The Sunday Times that the pest control firms found that poisoning was effective. Fixed methods like bird nets could not be used at different locations.
Mr Ng said about two to three complaints are received each week. They include gripes about the mess left by bird droppings, and concerns about the health hazards to humans.
Infections linked to birds include psittacosis, a bacterial infection of the lungs, which shows pneumonia-like symptoms.
Dr Tan Ai Ling, senior consultant and head of diagnostic bacteriology at the department of pathology, Singapore General Hospital, said: 'All birds, not just pigeons, are potential sources of infection.'
Other town councils also face the same issue: people feeding the birds.
'The leftover food and pigeon droppings are removed during our daily estate cleaning,' said a spokesman for Sembawang Town Council.
The pest control firms said they make an assessment before taking action.
Rentokil's managing director Joseph Ong said bird traps or bird spikes to prevent pigeons from landing on open spaces are some other methods used.
'Bird-proofing or bird-netting are alternative solutions to consider,' he added.
The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) said pigeons often congregate in areas where there are roosting or feeding opportunities.
'These include hawker centres and places of worship,' said a spokesman for the AVA.
Since 1973, the feeding of pigeons in public places has been banned. Last year, eight people were fined $200 each for the offence. There is no ruling on the feeding of other birds.
Mr Alan Owyong, chairman of the Nature Society of Singapore's Bird Group, wants a longer-term solution, besides using repellents and chemicals.
'The most humane method would be to release them on the outer islands. Some may find their way back to the mainland, but many may die naturally due to scarcity of food, and certainly will not reproduce that fast,' he said.
Poisoning birds an inhumane method
Straits Times 7 Mar 10;
I refer to last Sunday's article, 'Shocked by pigeon culling? Then stop feeding them'.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) shares the views of concerned citizens that poisoning of the birds is an inhumane method of population control. Humane alternatives, such as the bird-proofing techniques pointed out in the article, exist.
However, if poisoning continues to be the preferred choice of the authorities, pest control companies and town councils must ensure that the welfare of the birds remains a high priority.
Under no circumstances should a live bird be placed into a bag for disposal. Even if a bird is exhibiting signs of distress or disorientation, it should not be assumed that the amount of poison ingested is sufficient to kill the animal.
In 2008, the SPCA attended a scene of pigeon poisoning, where we retrieved some birds that were having difficulty flying. After a few days under observation, the birds were back to normal.
Had they been left in their environment, they would have been susceptible to road accidents or been attacked by predators, and if they had been disposed of in bags, they would surely have endured much suffering before death.
It is evident that poisoning is an inhumane method which severely compromises the welfare of the birds. We hope the present method can be reviewed as soon as possible to prevent any further suffering.
Leaving dying birds in plain view of the public also serves to desensitise people to the act of killing and the suffering of the animals.
Deirdre Moss (Ms)
Executive Officer
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Life's precious, stop pigeon culling
Straits Times 7 Mar 10;
In last Sunday's article, 'Shocked by pigeon culling? Then stop feeding them', Jalan Besar Town Council's senior property manager Ng Cheng Tee referred to complaints received about the birds, including concerns about health hazards to humans.
But the question we need to ask is: Has anyone been really ill as a result of exposure to the pigeons?
Singapore General Hospital's Dr Tan Ai Ling was quoted as saying that all birds, not just pigeons, are potential sources of infection.
If simply by being potential sources of infection, the pigeons are deemed to be cullable, should we not also consider fellow human beings cullable when they are sick and would rank higher in terms of the potential to spread diseases?
The teacher Akiko Ng mentioned in the article is my wife. I found her visibly shaken after witnessing the culling of the pigeons.
It was not too long ago when we found an injured pigeon lying on the pavement across the culling site.
In order to save it, we took it to an animal clinic and were prepared to pay for its treatment.
The vet, Dr Hsu, chose not to charge us for its treatment.
In the end, the pigeon did not survive, but we did our part to try to save a precious life.
What an irony it was to us when the town council decided to engage in the act of mass culling of the birds.
We would like to urge the authorities to hear our voices and stop the culling.
Lim Lee Nguan
Desy Nurhayati, The Jakarta Post 25 Feb 10;
The Environment Ministry has issued another warning against palm oil companies that have failed to abide by the environmental standards set under the compliance instrument of the Environmental Performance Rating Program (Proper).
Environment Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta said Tuesday that companies deemed to have failed in environmental management efforts after two consecutive assessments would be taken to court.
“We will first approach the companies to find out if they face any obstacles in implementing the standards. But if they still fail to comply a second time, we will bring them to court,” Gusti said on the sidelines of the International Palm Oil Conference.
“The 2009 Environmental Protection and Management Law enables us to act more firmly,” he added.
The minister said that out of 209 registered palm oil companies, only 81 were listed on the rating program as of last year.
“Out of the 81 companies, between 60 and 70 percent have earned good ratings, while the remaining are still disobedient.”
The Proper scheme is aimed at improving companies’ commitment to environmental management. The ratings are set in five categories of color.
The highest rating is “Gold”, which is granted to businesses that have successfully conducted environmental management efforts and gained good results.
A “Green” rating is for companies that have made the same effort, but achieved better results.
“Blue” is for companies that have achieved the minimum requirement standard, while “red” is for companies that have achieved a part of the minimum standard. The lowest category of “black” is given to companies that do not engage in any environmental management.
The minister’s deputy, Masnellyarti Hilman, added the minister had already brought several noncompliant firms to court.
“Some of the court rules were in favor of us, but others didn’t meet our expectation.”
The ministry therefore provided training for judges and prosecutors dealing with cases of environmental violation.
Palm oil companies are often blamed for massive forest conversion in many areas across the
archipelago.
Wiwin Effendy, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) national coordinator of the forest conversion program, said companies should stop converting forest into plantations and make use of degraded or unused lands for expansion.
“There are still many degraded lands available to be developed into palm oil plantations. We have conducted research and found there are more than 1 million hectares of land that meets the ecological requirements for palm oil cropping.”
Agriculture Minister Suswono said the government had issued permits for the development of palm oil estates for 9.7 million hectares.
Yahoo News 27 Feb 10;
FREETOWN (AFP) – Sierra Leone's fragile mangrove ecosystem risks being depleted if steps are not taken, the country's forestry director said Saturday after African countries adopted a plan to save coastal mangrove forests.
"There is (a) need to formulate and implement a sustainable policy... and a need for an integrated approach for the safeguard of the environmental and economic benefits of mangrove resources," Ahmed Mansaray said in a statement broadcast on national radio.
Mansaray spoke a day after Sierra Leone and five other west African countries -- Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Guinea -- signed onto an action plan for sustainable mangrove management in Freetown.
Trees and shrubs that grow in saline areas of the tropics and subtropics, mangroves play a key role as nursery areas for fish and shrimp and in stabilising shorelines, environmentalists say.
Mangroves cover about 760,000 hectares (1.9 million acres) of Sierra Leone -- on par with the country's forest cover, according to government statistics.
But rice cultivation, wood cutting and other activities have taken a toll on the country's mangrove ecosystem, experts at the Freetown workshop were quoted as saying.
Worldwide, mangrove forests are among the most threatened tropical ecosystems, with pollution, climate change, overharvesting and overfishing among the factors accounting for their disappearance, according to international conservation group WWF.
Jeanna Bryner, livescience.com 27 Feb 10;
Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake activity. And so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the capital region overnight was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was it outside the realm of normal, scientists say, even though it comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.
One scientist, however, says that relative to a time period in the past, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 years or so.
The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami it spawned, originated on a hot spot known as a subduction zone, where one plate of Earth's crust dives under another. It's part of the very active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.
"This particular subduction zone has produced very damaging earthquakes throughout its history," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The world's largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same fault zone in May 1960.
Even so, magnitude-8 earthquakes occur globally, on average, just once a year. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is much more intense than a magnitude 8, and so this event would be even rarer, said J. Ramón Arrowsmith, a geologist at Arizona State University.
Is Earth shaking more?
The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were hit with a 7.0-magnitude quake just last night. News of this, the Haiti quake and now Chile make it seem Earth is becoming ever more active. But in the grand scheme of things, geologists say this is just Mother Nature as usual.
"From our human perspective with our relatively short and incomplete memories and better and better communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent," Arrowsmith said. "But this is probably not any indication of a global change in earthquake rate of significance."
Coupled with better communication, as the human population skyrockets and we move into more hazardous regions, we're going to hear more about the events that do occur, Arrowsmith added.
However, "relative to the 20-year period from the mid 1970's to the mid 1990's, the Earth has been more active over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of Science & Technology. "We still do not know the reason for this yet. Could simply be the natural temporal variation of the stress field in the earth's lithosphere." (The lithosphere is the outer solid part of the Earth.)
And while the Chilean earthquake wasn't directly related to Japan's 7.0-magnitude temblor, the two have some factors in common.
For one, any seismic waves that did make their way from Japan to the Chilean coast could play a slight role in ground-shaking.
"It is too far away for any direct triggering, and those distances also make the seismic waves as they would pass by from the Haiti or Japan events pretty small because of attenuation," Arrowsmith told LiveScience. (Attenuation is the decrease in energy with distance.) "Nevertheless, if the Chilean fault surface were close to failure, those small waves could push it even closer."
In addition, both regions reside within the Ring of Fire, which is a zone surrounding the Pacific Ocean where the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates dive beneath other slabs of Earth. About 90 percent of the world's earthquakes occur along this arc. (The next most seismic region, where just 5 to 6 percent of temblors occur, is the Alpide belt, which extends from the Mediterranean region eastward.)
Colliding plates
The Chilean earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates. These rocky slabs are converging at a rate of 3 inches (80 mm) per year, according to the USGS. This huge jolt happened as the Nazca plate moved down and landward below the South American plate. This is called a subduction zone when one plate subducts beneath another.
(Over time, the overriding South American Plate gets lifted up, creating the towering Andes Mountains.)
The plate movement explains why coastal Chile has such a history of powerful earthquakes. Since 1973, 13 temblors of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred there, according to the USGS.
In fact, today's earthquake originated about 140 miles (230 km) north of the source region of the magnitude 9.5 earthquake of May, 1960, considered the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake in the world.
The 1960 earthquake killed 1,655 people in southern Chile, unleashing a tsunami that crossed the Pacific and killed 61 people in Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines.
In November 1922, a magnitude-8.5 earthquake occurred about 540 miles (870 km) to the north of the Feb. 27 earthquake, triggering a local tsunami that inundated the Chile coast and crossed the Pacific to Hawaii.
Because the recent one was such a huge earthquake, the shaking would likely have caused just as much damage had a similar-sized event occurred elsewhere, said Baldwin, the USGS scientist.
"If [the quake] were in Los Angeles you'd probably have massive destruction too," Baldwin said in a telephone interview.
Andrea Thompson contributed reporting to this story.
Chile quake wave racing to Asia at jet speed: scientist
Yahoo News 28 Feb 10;
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A tsunami triggered by the powerful quake that rocked Chile was Saturday racing across the Pacific Ocean towards Hawaii and Asia at around 450 miles per hour, a quake expert said.
Estimating the depth of the wave's water column to be around four kilometers (2.4 miles) on average, Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, calculated that at mid-ocean, the mass of water would be hurtling toward Hawaii at 200 meters per second, or 720 kilometers per hour (446 mph).
"Mid-ocean, the wave is traveling at around the speed of a jet plane," Bilham told AFP.
"The amplitude of the wave is small when it's mid-ocean, but it may rise to five to 10 meters when it reaches Japan or the Philippines," he said.
A huge arc of nations around the Pacific, from New Zealand to Japan, have gone on tsunami alert, while sirens sounded warnings of destructive waves around Hawaii for the first time in 16 years.
The powerful 8.8-magnitude quake that rattled Chile in the early hours of Saturday occurred offshore in a subduction zone -- the point where two tectonic plates meet and one plunges beneath the other.
The undersea earthquake that set off the 2004 Asian tsunami, which killed some 200,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless, was also a subduction earthquake.
"Subduction zone earthquakes produce the world largest tsunamis because the sea floor moves like a piston, heaving 100 kilometer by 50 kilometer (60 miles x 30 miles) or larger regions of sea floor water up or down," Bilham told AFP.
Walls of water of up to four meters (13 feet) crashed ashore in French Polynesia and the Marquesas Islands hours after the quake had rattled Chile.
But the tsunamis caused only minor damage and no casualties as they rampaged across the Pacific, where authorities had sounded warning sirens and urged residents of coastal areas to move to higher ground.
The tidal waves that devastated parts of southern Asia in 2004 struck without warning. It was after that deadly series of monster waves that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, set up after a tsunami unleashed by a 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile in 1960, beefed up its warning system.
"This time, we're ready for the tsunamis. When the waves hit Hawaii, there will be cameras there to catch them," said Bilham.
"This is a huge success," he said.
Tsunami spares US, takes aim at Japan
Mark Niesse and Audrey McAvoy Associated Press Google News 28 Feb 10;
HONOLULU — With a rapt world watching the drama unfold on live television, a tsunami raced across a quarter of the globe on Saturday and set off fears of a repeat of the carnage that caught the world off guard in Asia in 2004.
The tsunami delivered nothing more than a glancing blow to the U.S. and most of the Pacific, but Japan was still bracing for a direct hit and waves up to 10 feet high (3 meters). Scientists worried the giant wave could gain strength as it rounds the planet and consolidates, though the first wave to hit Japan's outlying island's was just 4 inches (10 centimeters) high.
The tsunami was spawned by a ferocious magnitude-8.8 earthquake in Chile that sent waves barreling north across the Pacific at the speed of a jetliner. But Pacific islands had ample time to prepare because the quake struck several thousand miles away.
By the time the tsunami hit Hawaii — a full 16 hours after the quake — officials had already spent the morning ringing emergency sirens, blaring warnings from airplanes and ordering residents to higher ground.
The islands were back to paradise by the afternoon, but residents endured a severe disruption and scare earlier in the day: Picturesque beaches were desolate, million-dollar homes were evacuated, shops in Waikiki were shut down, and residents lined up at supermarkets to stock up on food and at gas stations.
Others parked their cars along higher ground to watch the ocean turbulence, and one brave soul stayed behind and surfed before being urged by an emergency helicopter pilot to get out of the water.
There were no immediate reports of widespread damage, injuries or deaths in the U.S. or in much of the Pacific, but a tsunami that swamped a village on an island off Chile killed at least five people and left 11 missing.
Waves hit California, but barely registered amid stormy weather. A surfing contest outside San Diego went on as planned.
Despite Internet rumors of significant problems in coastal areas of California, no injuries or major property damage occurred.
It was still possible that the tsunami would gain strength again as it heads to Japan. That's what happened in 1960, when a deadly tsunami killed dozens of people in Hilo, Hawaii, then went on to claim some 200 lives in Japan.
Japan and Russia were the only countries left on the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's watch list, but some countries in Asia and the Pacific — including the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand — said their own warnings would remain in effect as a precaution.
Japan put all of its eastern coastline on alert for a "major" tsunami Sunday and ordered hundreds of thousands of residents in low-lying areas to seek higher ground. It was the first such alert for Japan's coasts in nearly 20 years.
Hawaii had originally prepared to bear the brunt of the damage, but the tsunami was smaller than anticipated.
"We dodged a bullet," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.
The tsunami initially raised fears that the Pacific could fall victim to the type of killer waves that killed 230,000 people in the Indian Ocean in 2004 the morning after Christmas. During that disaster, there was little to no warning and much confusion about the impending waves.
Officials said the opposite occurred after the Chile quake: They overstated their predictions for the size of the waves and the threat.
"We expected the waves to be bigger in Hawaii, maybe about 50 percent bigger than they actually were," Fryer said. "We'll be looking at that."
The Navy moved more than a half dozen vessels to try to avoid damage from the tsunami. A frigate, three destroyers and two smaller vessels were being sent out of Pearl Harbor and a cruiser out of Naval Base San Diego, the Navy said.
The tsunami caused a series of surges in Hawaii that were about 20 minutes apart, and the waves arrived later and smaller than originally predicted. The highest wave at Hilo measured 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) high, while Maui saw some as high as 6.5 feet (2 meters).
Water began pulling away from shore off Hilo Bay on the Big Island just before noon, exposing reefs and sending dark streaks of muddy, sandy water offshore. Waves later washed over Coconut Island, a small park off Hilo's coast.
"We've checked with each county. There was no assessment of any damage in any county, which was quite remarkable," said Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle. "It's just wonderful that nothing happened and no one was hurt or injured."
Officials in Tonga and the Samoas evacuated coastal residents and used radio, television and mobile phone text messages to alert residents.
Sea surges hit 6.5 feet (2 meters) at several places in New Zealand. Waters at Tutukaka, a coastal dive spot near the top of the North Island, looked like a pot boiling with the muddy bottom churning up as sea surges built in size through the morning, sucking sea levels below low water marks before surging back.
A nude photo shoot involving scores of people scheduled for the coastline near the capital, Wellington, was canceled by the tsunami threat before any of the volunteers could strip.
Past South American earthquakes have had deadly effects across the Pacific.
A tsunami after a magnitude-9.5 quake that struck Chile in 1960, the largest earthquake ever recorded, killed about 140 people in Japan, 61 in Hawaii and 32 in the Philippines. It was about 3.3 to 13 feet (1 to 4 meters) in height, Japan's Meteorological Agency said.
Associated Press writers Jaymes Song and Greg Small in Honolulu; Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Chris Havlik in Phoenix, Ray Lilley in Wellington, New Zealand; Eric Talmadge in Tokyo; Alan Clendenning in Sao Paulo, Brazil; Tiphaine Issele in Papette, French Polynesia; Pauline Jelinek in Washington; and Charmaine Noronha in Toronto contributed to this report.
Nature in Singapore: mushrooms, moths and mangrove palm
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
Where are Nipah palms found in Singapore?
from wild shores of singapore
Grey Heron in courtship mode
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Underwater blasting next to Labrador shore continues until Aug 10
from wild shores of singapore
Tough love in a troubled climate
from BBC blog by Richard Black
Insight Down South by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star 27 Feb 10;
The public housing crisis has revived the question whether Singapore, with only 700sq km of land, can continue to accommodate the current five million residents, let alone increase it by a further one-third.
HOW is this land-squeezed island coping with housing an enlarged population of five million, including hundreds of thousands of recent foreign arrivals?
The answer gleaned from public comments about the Housing Development Board (HDB), the national icon that builds homes for 80% of the people is: “surprisingly poor”, given its sterling track record.
For 50 years, the HDB has helped to transform this former squatter colony into a global city of fine homes. At early times, it set a world record of building an average of one flat every 45 minutes.
The recent unprecedented intake of foreigners has, however, dealt a blow to its reputation, judging by the widespread complaint of poor anticipation, insufficient flats and spiralling prices.
As a result, resale subsidised apartments, which are still cheaper than private ones, have moved out of reach of many young fresh graduates planning to get married and settle down.
With affluent foreign PRs joining in the rush – some for profits – resale prices of HDB apartments have increased by some 45% in the last few years. The government, which usually plans ahead, is finding itself in hot soup for being under-prepared by the explosive demand. An indication of this: In 2008, HDB built only 3,183 new flats when there were over 90,000 PRs and 20,000 new citizens in the same year, according to official statistics.
Only Singaporeans – not foreigners or PRs – are allowed to buy new government flats, which are generally well designed and planned. Because of the long waiting time, however, many Singaporeans opt to pay more for resale units in the open market, where they run into competition from PR buyers.
Some commentators feel it is unfair just to blame the HDB, since the problem covers a wide range of population, immigration as well as manpower policies that involves the entire government and not just public housing.
The top leadership has drawn up plans and an overall strategy for a 6.5 million population without fixing a time-frame.
But with public unhappiness rising over the perceived costs, over-crowdedness, rising prices, the immigration inflow is being slowed down.
“This probably means that if the authorities want to stick to its 6.5 million population, it will have to take a longer time – probably more than 20 years,” one business executive commented.
The public housing crisis has revived a question whether Singapore, with only 700 sq km of land, can continue to accommodate the current five million residents, let alone increase it by a further one-third. The high density may already have affected some quarters overseas.
The Ireland-based International Living magazine recently ranked Singapore, one of Asia’s wealthiest states, a lowly 70th position among top places to live in.
The city scored well on safety and risk, healthcare, leisure and culture, but was penalised for its environment which included considerations of density and population growth.
The demographic change in Singapore has been dramatic. Twenty years ago, it was a more pleasant city of 3.05 million, some two million fewer people than 4.99 million reached last year.
This expansion of 64% (mostly through immigration) in 20 years is a rate matched by few countries in modern history. It succeeded in pushing out Hong Kong as the world’s third densest-populated place.
On average of 7,023 persons live in each square kilometre of this city, compared to 6,349 in Hong Kong. Both are behind Macau (18,534) and Monaco (16,923).
The Minister of National Development, Mah Bow Tan, one of the staunchest advocates of a bigger population, regularly reassuring the people that Singapore has enough land for 6.5 million people. There was no need for a massive across-the-board change in development intensity, he added, as there was sufficient supply to meeting needs for the next 10 to 15 years.
Some government officials say the Government had drawn up plans for future housing, creation and land transport needs for the next 20 years when the population reaches 6.5 million.
In its latest move that shows its determination in carving out more space for a larger population, the Government plans to move much of the city underground. A government strategic committee has called for the creation of more underground space to accommodate shopping malls, train networks, civil defence shelters, pedestrian links as well as ammunition and oil storage. It has been reducing the average size of residential flats, both private and public, as well as stacking them higher.
Matching the government’s enthusiasm for a bigger population, however, is an alternative voice against it.
“Why do we need 6.5 million people?” asked a private doctor and former opposition candidate Dr Wong Wee Nam in an article warning about the consequences for his fellow citizens.
“A city needs to rejuvenate, transform and re-create itself continually in order to stay healthy and alive,” he said.
“How can an over-crowded place with all the ills of high density be able to do that?”
Reclamation could expand the country’s size from 700 to 708 sq km, according to Dr Wong, but it would not reduce density very much.
With a 6.5 million population, Singapore could well become the most densely populated place on earth, with 16,640 persons per sq km.
Another critic of mass immigration is the former top civil servant Mr Ngiam Tong Dow, who feels that Singapore is better served by investing in its own citizens than importing large numbers from abroad.
“We risk having them (talented foreigners) use us as a stepping stone... Singapore will be left with the second tier of average people,” he added.
Student campaign has 'Mother Earth' scaring people caught in the act
Victoria Vaughan, Straits Times 27 Feb 10;
SURPRISED by the amount of energy wasted in Singapore, a group of five business school students have launched an online campaign to raise awareness about the issue.
The campaign, run by MBA students at the Nanyang Technological University, directs members of the public to a website (www.energyoffences.com) which features video clips of unsuspecting people caught in the act of wasting energy.
In each clip, a mystery Mother Earth character appears and roars at the culprit, who is usually in the midst of wasting energy. This results in sometimes amusing reactions.
'The principle behind the campaign is that Mother Earth is scared by the global energy consumption, so now she's come to scare you,' said Miss Jenny Costelloe, 34, who is from Britain.
'We are all international students and we are struck by how efficient Singapore is. Yet, it blasts out air-conditioning from malls and leaves the doors open, and its energy consumption is inefficient. We are hoping to get people to think about that.'
The group said the website was a 'social experiment to see if confronting people in a (hopefully) funny way will make them think twice about what they're doing. By sharing the clips of people's reactions, we aim to make people laugh, to make people think and, most importantly, to get people to change their behaviour'.
The students are hoping that people will start posting their own videos of energy being wasted.
So far, the website, which went live last month, has had more than 600 visitors and the Facebook group has more than 230 members.
Another student, Mr Noah Gunzinger from Switzerland, said: 'What we've found is that most people know that they're wasting energy in some simple way, but they always feel that they have an excuse. This is what we're trying to change; we can't always have an excuse!'
All 'victims' of the Mother Earth scare tactics received a thank you gift for allowing their video to be used on the website.
Smart Car Rental will offer eco-friendly cars for hire later this year
Christopher Tan, Straits Times 27 Feb 10;
WANT to drive an electric car without blowing a small fortune on buying one?
Such eco-friendly cars, which cost twice as much as petrol equivalents, will be available for rent later this year from Smart Car Rental, a sister company of taxi operator Smart Taxis.
Smart will start this new business with three electric Mitsubishi hatchbacks and charge a rental of $150 a day - about twice the rate for an equivalent petrol model. It will add at least two more cars, possibly of other makes, later on.
The first electric cars will arrive in Singapore for test-bedding later this year. The Government will grant buyers a tax waiver under a research scheme open to corporations and institutions, but not individuals.
Smart Car Rental owner Johnny Harjantho said his battery-powered fleet 'will give us a unique selling point', as the average motorist without deep pockets is unlikely to be able to afford one.
He is also partly motivated by his pro-environment beliefs, he added. Three in 10 of Smart Taxi's fleet of 750 cabs run on compressed natural gas (CNG), deemed more environmentally friendly than diesels.
Of the electric cars, Mr Harjantho said: 'If we can rent them out more than 15 days a month, we'll make money.' His current rental fleet is made up of 10 CNG cars and more than 50 petrol cars.
The new battery-powered Mitsubishis cost around $90,000 each after the Government's tax exemption. When operational expenses such as maintenance, insurance and financing are factored in, each car will cost Smart about $160,000.
Meanwhile, other parties are also looking at leasing electric vehicles, as they can benefit from the revised tax incentive announced in this week's Budget for experimental green vehicles.
Multi-brand motor group Wearnes, for example, is working on a leasing scheme for Renault electric cars.
Nissan Asia Pacific's senior manager for marketing and sales Chuya Hara said: 'We hope to bring in our electric vehicle by next year.'
Mitsubishi agent Cycle & Carriage (C&C) said the tax break extension, from two years to six, makes ownership more viable. Users have a longer period for depreciation of the cars, explained Mr Alvyn Ang, director of operations of C&C, which will supply Smart Car Rental with its first electric cars.
To qualify for the tax break, Prime Taxi plans to convert its petrol-electric hybrid taxis into plug-in hybrids, which run like electric cars but have petrol engines as a back-up.
Mr Zafar Momin, a lecturer at Nanyang Business School and a former automotive specialist with the Boston Consulting Group, said: 'I believe electric cars will get off to a very strong start here... The key issue really will be the economics of ownership.� This is where government subsidies, in whatever form, can make a big difference.'
Michael Mccarthy, The Independent 26 Feb 19;
Why are we asking this now?
Because a female trainer, Dawn Brancheau, was killed this week by a captive killer whale which dragged her into its tank at the SeaWorld centre in Orlando, Florida.
Isn't that just a killer whale living up to its name?
Well, yes and no. The name killer whale originally came from the fact that these striking, large and fierce animals had been seen to be "killers of whales" – and they do indeed sometimes hunt other whale species in the open ocean (The name biologists increasingly prefer to use is orca, the second half of its scientific name, Orcinus orca).
Yet even though they were feared for centuries – the first known reference is in the Elder Pliny's Natural History in the 1st century AD – there is no established record of orcas killing human beings in the wild, although there have been a few cases of what seem to have been accidental or mistaken attacks.
During Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole a century ago, a killer whale tried to tip over an ice floe on which a photographer was standing with a dog team, but it is thought that the dogs' barking might have sounded enough like seal calls to trigger the animal's hunting instinct.A surfer was bitten in California in the 1970s and a boy who was bathing was bumped by a killer whale in Alaska several years ago, but there have been very few attacks in the wild, and none fatal. In captivity, however, it's a different story.
How so?
There have been quite a few attacks by captive killer whales on their trainers. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) says: "It happens more than you think." One source suggested yesterday that since the 1970s, killer whales in captivity have attacked 24 people around the world, and some of these encounters have been fatal.
As recently as last December, a trainer at the Loro Parque animal park on the Spanish island of Tenerife, Alexis Martinez Hernandez, was crushed to death when a stunt he was rehearsing with a 14-year-old killer whale named Keto went wrong. And Tilikum, the animal involved in this week's fatal attack, who was captured from the wild in Iceland, was, with two other orcas, involved in the death of a trainer in Canada in 1991, and then of a man who had sneaked into Florida SeaWorld in 1999 and appears to have fallen into Tilikum's pool.
So why do they attack people in captivity when they don't in the wild?
The answer seems to be captivity-related stress. It's not hard to understand. Killer whales are wild animals. They are strong. They are unpredictable. They are very intelligent, with their own complex communications system. They are very social – in the wild, they live in closely co-operating social groups with maybe 10 to 20 members.
If you take one out of the sea and stick it in a concrete swimming pool for the rest of its life, do you think that will have a benign effect on the animal's personality? What, thanks for all the fish? When you consider the thousands of miles of open ocean though which wild killer whales freely roam – they are dolphins, after all, the biggest members of the dolphin family – ending up in SeaWorld is the orca equivalent of you or me being imprisoned by a lunatic in a cupboard under the stairs.
Many zoos have now recognised that close confinement of big mammals – sticking lions and tigers in cages, and elephants in concrete houses – is entirely wrong and counter-productive. In the 1970s, London Zoo, for example, held a polar bear in a concrete pit which used to pace up and down continually all day long in what was clearly mad despair. (The pit has long since been empty).
But the people who hold the 42 orcas currently in captivity around the world have too big a financial interest in keeping them in anything larger than a bare pool in which they can perform cheesy stunts for the benefit of paying tourists. And what happens is – to use the vernacular – that it does their heads in. If you think this is just opinionating, look at the mortality figures.
What do they show?
There is an increasing amount of data on orcas in the wild, especially from western Canada, where they have been studied for decades, and it is clear that in their natural state their lifespan is something similar to that of humans. They tend to live up to 50 years, but there are cases of some of the females surviving much longer, perhaps even to 80 and beyond.
In captivity the picture is very different. The figures are known precisely. According to the WDCS, there have been 136 killer whales captured in the wild and held in captivity since the first one in 1961, of which 123 have now died, and the average survival time is four years.
It is thought that the stress of captivity lowers their resistance to disease. And it clearly also alters their behaviour, leading among other things to unpredictable aggression. (The very first one to be captured, by the way, the 1961 animal, a small female taken in Californian waters, lasted one day. She died after repeatedly swimming around her pool at high speed, ramming into the sides of the tank).
So what should happen now?
Animal welfare campaigners and many biologists think that orcas should simply not be held in captivity. They should be freed, all of them. Unfortunately, it's not a simple business – you can't just chuck them back like a fish you might have caught. You would have to transfer them to pens in the sea, for them to be rehabituated to the wild, and then there is the question of whether or not they could rejoin the family pod from which there are taken.
The experience of Keiko, the orca who starred in the three Free Willy movies, shows how difficult it is – when he eventually was freed in 2002 he was never able to find a pod and only lasted 18 months, before dying off the coast of Norway.
But even if there can only be a halfway house – returning captive orcas to sea pens where they could be cared for – it is very likely preferable to a life of balancing a ball on your nose in front of 5,000 popcorn chewers.
Is freedom for captive killer whales likely?
Well, just so you know, no fewer than 21 of the world total of 42 orcas held in captivity are kept in the three US aquaria run by SeaWorld, which was part of the "entertainment business" of the giant brewing company Anheuser Busch until it was sold for $2.7bn last October to the New York private equity business Blackstone. Big bucks, big bucks. Freedom? What do you think?
Is it right to trap such wildlife in artificial environments?
Yes...
* They can perform a useful educational function for adults and especially for children, who may become supporters of conservation.
* Captive breeding, where it is possible, may be a lifeline for species which are threatened with extinction.
* Modern methods of keeping animals – in some cases –are much better than they were a few years ago
No...
* Many big animals, orcas perhaps above all, are far too large and have too large a range in the wild to be held in narrow confinement.
* They clearly suffer from captivity-related stress which makes them susceptible to disease and shortens their lives.
* They may become aggressive and become a danger to their keepers as recent fatalities have illustrated.
What to do with captive orcas?
Matt Walker, BBC News 25 Feb 10;
The recent attack by a captive orca on its trainer at a SeaWorld facility in Orlando, Florida, has again raised questions about our relationship with these top marine predators.
No-one knows what triggered the latest incident, and experts agree that it is almost impossible to determine why the orca, called Tilikum, reacted as it did.
But it does highlight the tensions that occur when we choose to interact closely with these huge animals.
It is also debatable what to do with those orcas, also known as killer whales, that remain in captivity.
"They are highly social animals that tend to live in cohesive groups, so it's quite an artificial environment to capture them and put them in a small area," says Dr Andrew Foote, an expert on wild orcas from the University of Aberdeen, UK
"The tragic events are a reminder that orcas are wild, strong and often unpredictable animals," says Danny Groves, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS).
Wild attacks
Reports differ, but there have been up to 24 attacks by captive orcas on people.
Contrary to popular perception, attacks by wild orcas on people have also been recorded, though no-one has been hurt.
Researcher Chris Pierpoint of the Marine Mammal Observer Association was working in Antarctica when he once subjected to a rather sophisticated, planned attack by a group of orcas.
Wild orcas in the region cooperate to hunt by swimming together towards seals resting on ice floes.
As they do so, they create a bow wave that washes the hapless seal from the ice and into the water.
"Chris Pierpoint had that done to him when in a rib in Antarctica," says Dr Foote, though he wasn't thrown overboard.
"A famous incidence occurred in the 1960s when a surfer was knocked off his board, but he was fine, the whale didn't bite."
A couple of years ago in Alaska, a child swimming in the sea also described how an orca made a bee-line toward him, before aborting a supposed attack at the last minute.
One idea is that air bubbles in neoprene wetsuits can confuse the echolocation of orcas, so they do not realise that they are approaching a person.
But the scarcity of such attacks underlines the difficulty in pinpointing their cause.
"It's really isolated incidences. Killer whales live in cold water so they don't overlap with people much," says Dr Foote.
Send them home?
What the latest attack by a captive orca reveals is just how little we still know about the animals, in captivity and in the wild.
For example, we are only just glimpsing how intelligent orcas really are and the
However, few insights come from studying captive whales, though some have helped reveal their acoustic behaviour.
"The science doesn't justify the captivity. One thing I would hope is that this unfortunate incident might lead to a considered discussion on phasing out these marine parks."
So what can or should be done with captive orcas?
One option would be to prevent further deaths by restricting trainers from encroaching too close to the poolside.
Another would be to put down any whale considered too dangerous to be kept in captivity.
The final option, and that which on the surface appears the most palatable from an animals rights perspective, is to release those whales still in captivity back into the wild.
The WDCS has repeatedly called for captive whales to be returned, not least because captivity appears to drastically reduce their life expectancy.
But that is not as simple as it sounds.
A study published by US and Danish scientists last year in the journal Marine Mammal Science documents the
Captured in 1979 as a near two-year-old calf, Keiko found fame as the star of the 1993 family film Free Willy, after which public pressure grew to release him back to the wild.
Training for his reintroduction began in 1996, and after 2000 his trainers began taking him out into the sea on open ocean swims designed to prepare him for a wild life.
But Keiko rarely interacted with wild orcas, and never integrated into a wild pod.
He also struggled to learn how to hunt, making shallower and less frequent dives than wild whales.
Eventually, and despite the best efforts of his trainers, he could not break his need for human contact, and kept following or returning to the trainers' boat.
Keiko eventually died, still semi-captive in 2003.
"The release of Keiko demonstrated that release of long-term captive animals is especially challenging and while we as humans might find it appealing to free a long-term captive animal, the survival and well being of the animal may be severely impacted in doing so," the report's authors write.
ABC, CBS, Good Morning America, Orlando Sentinel 25 Feb 10;
The death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau illustrates how eyewitnesses can see a traumatic incident far differently.
First, though, SeaWorld didn’t help matters by suggesting, in a news conference yesterday afternoon, that the trainer had slipped and fallen in the tank. That incorrect information confused matters, and the theme park had to backtrack from it. Why add confusion to the tragedy? (
But what happened between Brancheau and the whale Tilikum? You have a range of accounts.
What did Tilikum do? ABC’s “Good Morning America” said the whale “suddenly lunged at the woman.”
On CBS’ “The Early Show,” a witness said her daughter saw the whale “kind of lashing out. He shook her [Brancheau] violently.”
The Sentinel quoted witnesses who said “the animal suddenly grabbed Brancheau by the upper arm, tossed her around in his mouth and pulled her beneath the water.”
But a husband and a wife shared a less dramatic account on WOFL-Channel 35. The husband said the trainer’s hair must have been in the whale’s teeth when the animal rolled, taking her down with him. (Would that behavior qualify as an attack?)
The wife told WOFL there was a “a sudden jerk” and the whale brought the trainer up once before taking her down for five minutes.
Was the whale agitated? WESH-Channel 2 reported that it was.
On “Good Morming America,” George Stephanopoulos asked, “What pushed this whale over the edge?”
Yet a husband and a wife told “GMA” that the whale didn’t seem agitated while being patted by the trainer.
What was the whale’s manner?
WKMG-Channel 6 quoted the daughter of a former SeaWorld worker, who described Tilikum as “difficult, depressed and usually temperamental.”
On “GMA,” Chuck Tompkins, curator of zoological operations at SeaWorld, disagreed.
“I think that information is extremely inaccurate. I’ve worked with Tilikum his entire career here at SeaWorld,” Tompkins said. “I can tell you right now he is not a depressed animal. He is a very good animal.”
CBS’ “The Early Show” noted that the whale had many safe interactions with humans.
If Tilikum had a hard day yesterday, the killer whale was hardly alone. A witness told “The Early Show” that trainers had said three other whales did not want to perform and were not cooperating.
As for the late Brancheau, WESH had touching footage of her from 2000, when she said she had a lot of fun working with the whales.
From the reporting, we learned Brancheau knew the dangers and thought of the whales as her children.
I wonder what she would make of stories about a “killer whale attack.”
This is one of those stories that we’ll probably never know exactly what happened. Of course, that won’t stop anyone from talking about it. But when the human race deals with such magnificent creatures, mysterious things are bound to happen.
Death of Sea World trainer: Do 'killer whales' belong in theme parks?
Daniel B. Wood Christian Science Monitor Yahoo News 24 Feb 10;
Los Angeles – The death of a veteran Sea World trainer in Orlando, Fla., Wednesday has spotlighted the campaign of several major animal rights groups to keep marine mammals out of theme parks altogether.
Dawn Brancheau was killed when a 12,300-lb. male orca “killer whale” grabbed her in front of an audience at the Orlando theme park.
Now, animal rights activists say that many questions should be asked in the wake of Ms. Brancheau's death. Sea World has said that the very same orca is responsible for human deaths in 1991 and again in 1999. The Humane Society of the United States has long campaigned for marine mammals to be removed from theme parks.
“These behemoths are denied all of their natural, instinctual inclinations, and we humans tend to think, ‘Well, this is just a bad animal.’ But it is a wild animal, used to running free in an entire ocean, but now confined to a very small space,” says Joyce Tischler, founder of and general counsel for Animal Legal Defense Fund. She compares an orca’s life in captivity in a tank to keeping a human being in a bathtub for his entire life. She says most Americans have romanticized notions of sea life perpetuated by such TV series as “Flipper.” But even dolphins are known to aggressively run their teeth down the backs of humans in hundreds of incidents that are not reported outside the conservation community press, she says.
SeaWorld closed its Orlando park immediately after the tragedy, and suspended its orca show in San Diego. “We've initiated an investigation to determine, to the extent possible, what occurred,” SeaWorld President Dan Brown said in a brief statement to reporters. Ms. Brancheau had worked at the park since 1994. Mr. Brown said no SeaWorld park had ever before experienced a similar incident and pledged a thorough review of all of the park's standard operating procedures. “This is an extraordinarily difficult time for the SeaWorld parks and our team members. Nothing is more important than the safety of our employees, guests, and the animals entrusted to our care," Brown said. “We extend our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of the trainer and will do everything possible to assist them in this difficult time.”
The orca is the largest member of the dolphin family and is known as a favorite at Sea World. Killer whales are a highly social species.
But “the vast majority of the orca whales in captivity would be far better off to be returned to the wild. Orcas are unbelievably ill-suited to life in theme parks and can be successfully returned to the wild. We know, because we have done it,” says David Phillips, director of the International Marine Mammal Project for the Earth Island Institute, who led the effort to rescue, rehabilitate, and release the killer whale Keiko, made famous in the movie “Free Willy.” “Orcas deserve a better fate than living in cramped pools.
Mr. Phillips recalls that Keiko went from languishing in small pool in Mexico City all the way to swimming with wild whales in his native waters in Iceland. He ended up swimming to Norway and living there in a bay with some human care until he died. Phillips says the public would be better served by seeing orcas in the wild and ensuring their protection there.
“This isn’t the first time that stressed-out orca whales have injured or killed people, and unfortunately, it is not likely to be the last,” says Phillips. “It is high time that the marine park industry get out of the captive orca business.”
Tischler takes on the argument most often given by defenders of such captivity: That it is educational and spotlights the need for conservation and protection of such creatures: “The people who run these theme parks are not interested in conservation or protection, they are interested in making money,” Tischler says. “I would be asking, ‘Why was this animal kept after the first death?’ ”
“This is a giant warning sign that society needs to rethink this question of holding large predators in captivity,” says Chris Palmer, author of “Shooting in the Wild,” a book about wild animals in captivity, who also teaches at American University. “Having a trainer killed this way can’t justify whatever benefits we get from conservation or protection.”
SeaWorld Won't Euthanize Whale, Feds Investigate Trainer Death
Park Has No Plans to Euthanize Killer Whale Linked to Deaths of 3 People
Russell Goldman, ABC News 25 Feb 10;
SeaWorld has no plans to euthanize the killer whale that dragged a trainer to her death Wednesday, and will allow trainers to continue to work with the animal, a park official said today.
As two federal agencies launched investigations into Dawn Brancheau's death, the park said it will review its safety policies and determine whether Tillikum, a 12,000-pound bull killer whale, will be used in shows and publicly displayed.
Brancheau, 40, an experienced trainer, was snatched by the whale in front of a stadium of horrified onlookers, thrashed and ultimately held under water to drown.
SeaWorld has for years banned trainers from swimming with Tillikum, who was linked to the death of a Canadian trainer in 1991 and another man who snuck into a holding area in 1999. The whale has, however, been used in public shows and is given commands from trainers from the sides of the tank.
Environment News Service 25 Feb 10;
DUBAI, February 25, 2010 (ENS) - The world's largest shopping mall was partially evacuated today as a crack opened in an enormous aquarium full of sharks, frightening shoppers and gushing water onto the floors.
Maintenance crews at the Dubai Mall rushed to the scene to contain the leak, which was captured in an amateur video taken by a shopper.
According to a spokesperson for Emaar Retail, which manages the Dubai Mall and the aquarium, "A leakage was noticed at one of the panel joints of the Dubai Aquarium at the Dubai Mall and was immediately fixed by the aquarium's maintenance team."
"The leakage did not impact the aquarium environment or the safety of the aquatic animals," said the spokesperson in a statement. "The Dubai Aquarium works with international experts in aquarium management and upholds the highest safety standards in its management."
The ground floor and basement around the aquarium was evacuated and the area has been cordoned off. The aquarium is closed to the public indefinitely.
A spokesman for the civil defense force in the Persian Gulf city-state told reporters that "the situation is under control and a team is working on fixing the problem." As many as 300 cleaners were deployed to mop the water off the floors.
Open since November 2008, the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo has over 33,000 aquatic animals and holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest acrylic viewing panel - 32.88 meters wide by 8.3 meters high by 750 mm thick and weighing 245,614 kilograms.
The thick acrylic viewing panel must withstand the pressure of the 10 million liters of water used in the aquarium, but its transparency gives visitors clear views of over 33,000 marine animals on display.
More than one million visitors have attended the aquarium, located in the mall adjacent to the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which opened in January.
The 270-degree walkthrough tunnel leads viewers through the aquarium and Underwater Zoo, which features 36 aquatic displays in three ecological zones: rainforest, rocky shore, and living ocean.
Aquatic animals featured include: penguins, crocodiles, octopus, piranhas, spider crabs, water rats, giant catfish, lizards and tiger fish. An attraction at the aquarium is the Shark Dive, introduced in May 2009 as a first in the region within a mall environment.
Straits Times 27 Feb 10;
Evidence of last August's Montara oil spill may be nearly gone from the Timor Sea, but the effects of one of Australia's worst environmental disasters will be seen for years to come, affecting the feeding and breeding of marine life and vital fisheries and coral spawning. Here's a look at how oil spills affect marine life.
Charles Haviland, BBC News 26 Feb 10;
The Sri Lankan government says that it is concerned about the welfare of sea turtles which live and breed on the island's southern coastline.
The authorities say turtle hatcheries are operating there which contravene conservation laws and that they will prosecute those people involved.
Sri Lanka is a vital habitat for sea turtles as five of the seven species come ashore here to lay their eggs.
Watching adult and newly-hatched turtles is also popular with tourists.
That seems to be contributing to the problems faced by these endearing reptiles.
The Sri Lankan Daily Mirror Online website says in a new report that hatcheries which use them for commercial or leisure purposes are harming the species.
Dead hatchling
Environment Minister Champika Ranawaka says that wildlife officers have informed all hatcheries that selling the turtles or using them as meat or for any other commercial purpose is illegal.
"They can only be used for educational purposes," he said. "We've investigated the illegal places and given them warnings not to do that."
Senior wildlife official Sarath Dissanayake told the BBC that turtle hatchlings should have the freedom to walk over the beach to the sea, but hatcheries were illegally putting walls and barriers in their way.
A tourist said he had recently been at a facility where guests were encouraged to pick up baby turtles and "set them free" into the ocean.
He said the place was like a zoo and that at least one hatchling appeared to be dead.
But one hatchery owner told the Daily Mirror Online he is protecting the animals, not profiting from them.
"They have asked us to hatch them on the beaches," he said, "but we can't do that.
"If we wanted to do that, we'd need at least 20,000 soldiers guarding these turtles, because people are hungry for them, most use them as meat."
But the authorities are not convinced. They are preparing new guidelines on how turtle hatcheries should be maintained and say that those who violate them will be prosecuted.
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