Best of our wild blogs: 7 Nov 10

An adventurous landing on Terumbu Buran
from wonderful creation and wild shores of singapore and colourful clouds and Singapore Nature

Kampong Lorong Buangkok – flora and fauna
from isn't it a wonder, how life came to be

200 - A Milestone
from Butterflies of Singapore

What's called a Spider and a Scorpion, but is actually neither?
from Macro Photography in Singapore

First field trip with my new camera
from Urban Forest

Dolphins spotted off Changi beach!
from wild shores of singapore

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'Total Defence' for the environment

Adapt defence strategy for clean and green movement, says PM
Rachel Lin Straits Times 7 Nov 10;

A Total Defence concept - but for the Clean and Green movement?

That is what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong would like to see here: the adaptation of Singapore's comprehensive defence strategy - which stresses the role of every citizen in protecting the nation - to the environment.

'Taking care of the environment is something which concerns all of us,' he said yesterday. 'Singaporeans understand that national defence is critical to our survival and cannot be left to the Singapore Armed Forces alone and each citizen has a part to play.

'Similarly, we cannot succeed in making Singapore clean and green unless we get corporations and individuals to play their part alongside the Government.'

Mr Lee was speaking at the launch of the Clean and Green Singapore 2011 campaign. The annual campaign, now in its third year, aims to inspire Singaporeans to care for the environment. The theme this year is Promoting Environmental Ownership, and it was launched with a carnival that includes a bazaar selling eco-friendly products. It is sited in Sengkang where it will remain for two days.

In his speech, PM Lee noted that 'Singaporeans are feeling a growing environmental consciousness, especially young Singaporeans'.

However, individuals could do more to take ownership of the environment, even in 'little things in our daily lives', he added. Examples include watching closely the use of water and electricity, keeping Singapore dengue-free and taking care of plants and animals.

Organisations, meanwhile, can also support green initiatives - for instance, electronics company Sony Singapore has adopted Pandan Reservoir.

For its part, the Government 'has to set the right conditions', he acknowledged.

It has to provide a conducive living environment and a 'good mix of green and blue' across the island with park connectors and clean waters. It also has to maintain environmental standards by curbing pollution with stringent regulations and keeping common spaces clean.

And looking forward, 'we have to prepare for the future' by keeping abreast of new technology that can bring 'better, cleaner, more efficient infrastructure and tools', he pledged.

Adding some heft to PM Lee's call for the community to play its part, a $85,000 fund was set up yesterday for individuals and organisations to tap if they launch programmes promoting green causes.

Mr Teo Ser Luck, mayor of North East District, announced a Green Fund for his community development council (CDC). It supplements an existing $85,000 the National Environment Agency (NEA) gives to support the district's green efforts.

To Mr Teo's knowledge, his is the first such fund at a CDC level.

He said: 'Instead of putting money into one big bang event, I'd rather put it into programmes. It's more sustainable.'

Schemes that could be funded include anti-littering campaigns or art projects that spread green ideas, he said. Those interested can approach their grassroots bodies, such as residents' committees, for funding.

Some constituencies have already rolled out such initiatives as part of last year's Clean and Green campaign. Yesterday, their efforts were rewarded with awards from the NEA.

Aljunied-Hougang division received a Best Constituency (Ownership) Award. Young people there designed portable ashtrays and approached smokers in coffee shops to use them. They also knocked on doors to encourage residents not to litter.

Hong Kah North division got the same award for its 'Cash For Trash' scheme, which lets residents exchange their recyclable waste for groceries.

More firms taking up the green cause
Melissa Kok Straits Times 7 Nov 10;

From tree planting to conserving Pulau Semakau's shores, more corporations are making the greening of Singapore their pet cause.

Such corporate-level efforts and initiatives to green the country are increasingly popular, said Professor Leo Tan, chairman of the Garden City Fund, a registered charity of the National Parks Board (NParks).

More companies are practising green corporate social responsibility (CSR) not just for altruistic reasons, but also because they realise that there are economic benefits in going green, such as improving their public image and generating more long-term business, he added.

Yesterday, three corporations and an individual sponsor were honoured by NParks for their contributions to the greening effort, by having a heritage tree dedicated to each of them.

The Garden City Fund - to promote greater community involvement in Singapore's greening - was set up seven years ago with a key goal in mind: to raise $20 million by 2013.

That target has been surpassed this year, with more individuals and corporate sponsors coming on board the programme. When the fund was set up, there were only 40 individual and corporate sponsors; there are nearly 500 now.

The money raised goes towards supporting initiatives such as public education programmes and the conservation of heritage trees.

Prof Tan said he noticed the trend starting three years ago, around the same time NParks launched its Plant-A-Tree programme. Under this scheme, one can not only donate the cost of a young tree, but also plant it as well.

About 9,000 trees have since been pledged and planted, including 2,008 trees planted by ST Engineering, and 1,000 trees sponsored by Citibank.

Companies contacted said the national greening effort is now a popular sponsorship choice.

Ms Esther An, City Developments' head of CSR, said increased eco-education and public awareness, coupled with strong support from industry players, government agencies and research institutions, have translated into greater corporate support. Examples of such companies include HSBC, Kikkoman and Keppel Group.

For instance, HSBC recently collaborated with the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research for Project Semakau, a three-year volunteer-driven project to promote and conserve the island's intertidal shores.

In 2007, Keppel Group sponsored $250,000 for a coral nursery project to conserve the coral cover in Singapore, and got its volunteer divers to help restore the coral reefs along the coast of Pulau Semakau.

Other companies such as United Engineers Limited adopted part of the Singapore River under the PUB's Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters programme, to be the 'caretaker' of the waterway located next to the firm's offices at UE Square.

The job includes alerting the authorities to any litter found floating in the river or any inappropriate activities that could pollute the water.

Heritage trees in Singapore
Straits Times 7 Nov 10;

There are 178 heritage trees in Singapore maintained by the National Parks Board (NParks).

Such trees - earmarked for conservation by NParks - are nominated by the public, and evaluated by a 10-member Heritage Trees Panel comprising NParks officials and representatives from educational institutions.

The panel, in selecting a tree to come under NParks' Heritage Trees Scheme, will look at criteria such as its girth, rarity, historical significance, and cultural, social and educational value.

NParks introduced the scheme nine years ago to conserve mature trees like angsana, kapok and rain trees that are considered part of the natural heritage of Singapore.

The trees are thoroughly inspected every 12 months, and are installed with metal conductors to protect them from lightning strikes.

NParks also puts up educational signs to share interesting information about the trees with the public.

Examples of heritage trees here include a more than 80 years old umbrella-shaped rain tree (Samanea saman) at Fort Canning Park, and a more than 70 years old kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra), known for its large straight trunk and buttresses, at the Botanic Gardens.

Green message taking root among youths
Hoe Yeen Nie Channel NewsAsia 6 Nov 10;

SINGAPORE: It seems the green message is taking root among Singapore's youths.

In a recent survey by the National Environment Agency (NEA), four in five believed that they can make a difference.

The growing involvement of youths was highlighted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the launch of the Clean and Green Singapore 2011 campaign.

Everyone, he said, has a part to play.

"Taking care of the environment is something which concerns all of us. We don't all have to take on global causes, but each of us can contribute locally by keeping Singapore our island clean and green," said Prime Minister Lee.

Many say it is important to get kids started on the green movement from young.

At Punggol Primary School, students have turned old bottles into flower pots, showing that you can easily reduce, reuse and recycle so long as you put some creativity into it.

At Jurong Primary School, students have created bottle gardens, the idea coming from teacher, Mrs Wendy Looi. On Saturday, she received an award for sharing her love for recycling and gardening with her students.

Mrs Looi said: "We've got children who love insects, and they enjoy catching caterpillars. We also have those who are so nervous at the sight of an earthworm they'll scream. So, as teachers, we'll tell them, these are the harmless ones, those are the garden helpers. In fact we take them to gardens so they can see the beautiful flowers, and we remind them of all the beautiful creatures that are the garden helpers that help in the growth of the plants."

Mrs Looi is one of six Community In Bloom Ambassadors recognised by NParks this year for going the extra mile to spread the gardening bug.

Another award winner is 51-year-old Anjalai Ammal, a senior horticulturist with Tampines Town Council, who helped create 36 community gardens in the housing estate.

And to get more people to explore Singapore's biodiversity, NParks has created four new trail guides. You can just print them off the website, and you're good to go on your exploration.

NParks' director of Streetscape, Simon Longman, said: "They will come to appreciate how sustainable it is, and how we help to sustain the biodiversity."

Guides are available for Botanic Gardens, Changi, Pulau Ubin and Fort Canning.

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Along came a spider (collection)

Museum gets diplomat's gift of 12,000 specimens that can be used to study if any Asian species has gone extinct over last 40 years
Lin Yang Straits Times 7 Nov 10;

His job is that of Singapore's High Commissioner to Brunei. But what really makes Mr Joseph Koh tick is: playing with spiders.

So passionate is he about these creepy crawlies that his close friends and colleagues nicknamed him 'Spiderman'. It has been a love affair that has spanned 40 years, and made the diplomat - who has amassed more than 12,000 specimens of spiders - an expert in the field.


Singapore's High Commissioner to Brunei Joseph Koh has donated his collection of spiders, including more than 500 species from Singapore and South-east Asia, to the museum. PHOTOS: LEONG TZI MING

Now, the 62-year-old will donate his entire collection to the Raffles Museum for Biodiversity Research, more than doubling the museum's current holding of 5,000 specimens.

His collection includes more than 500 species from Singapore and South-east Asia and represents a historical catalogue which can help scientists determine whether any arachnid species have become extinct over the last 40 years.

This donation comes as the museum looks to expand. So far, it has raised $46 million to build a new building by 2014 and increase its exhibition and collection space by 10 times the current size. It needs $9 million more.

'It will be morally wrong, if not downright criminal, if such a large collection is left at home to collect dust when it should be studied by other scientists,' Mr Koh told The Sunday Times about his decision to gift his collection.

Besides, there are too many specimens for him to study within his lifetime, he said.

The collection grew, thanks to Mr Koh's active hunting for specimens in the wild, often taking colleagues on the prowl. One of them, Ms Ria Tan, 50, credits him for inspiring her to become a conservationist. She founded Wild Singapore, a website devoted to local environmental news. Mr Koh was her supervisor in the civil service 25 years ago.

'He organised these leisure trips on the weekends, where we would go hunting for spiders in the jungles of Singapore,' recalled Ms Tan.

Mr Koh taught her and other colleagues how to find spiders, take photos, and finally, to trap them inside plastic pill boxes.

At the end of each excursion, he would take the spiders home to study, preserve, and catalogue them. 'He's got this Darwinian persona of a kind, patient teacher. My passion for nature all started with him.'

Mr Koh has a long-established relationship with the museum. Along with some previous specimen donations, he also published an authoritative guide to spiders in Singapore in 1989; a guide that staff at the museum regularly use.

The Raffles Museum bestowed on him the title of Honorary Research Associate in 2004 for his contributions to science.

Professor Leo Tan, 66, who is leading the museum's fund-raising effort for the new building, was also Mr Koh's tutor during their undergraduate years.

Prof Tan remembers Mr Koh as a professor's dream student; one who did not study science for the purpose of making money, but for the pursuit of knowledge itself. 'He has this innate passion for insects, and it was unfortunate he had to enter the civil service due to lack of opportunities in life sciences at the time.'

Still, Mr Koh lived his passion in his spare time, and found the diversity of arachnid species fascinating. 'I am 'turned on' by the discovery of new patterns of similarities amid the variations,' he said.

Since the fund-raising drive started last December, the museum has received other interesting donations. An American, who was returning to his native home, bequeathed a bull and an elk head.

A local chef contributed his personal collection of fossils. And the owner of a local tannery donated a large collection of 50- to 60-year-old animal skins, including tiger skins; such a gift is impossible to acquire legally today.

Not everyone close to Mr Koh shared his enthusiasm for spiders. When he proposed to his wife 36 years ago, she agreed to marry him only if he removed all of his spiders from the bedroom.

But as the collection grew, the specimens made their way gradually back to our 'love nest', he said.

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Ban helps increase wildlife population in Johor

Moh Farhaan Shah The Star 7 Nov 10;

JOHOR BARU: The royal ban on wildlife hunting in Johor has helped to steadily increase wildlife population in the state.

Johor National Parks Corporation director Abu Bakar Mohamed Salleh said the wildlife population, especially that of tigers, had seen an increase and he attributed this to the ban that was decreed by Sultan Ibrahim ibni Almarhum Sultan Iskandar in April last year.

“Previously, we recorded 11 tigers at our national park. Since the ban was imposed, we have sighted four more tigers, including three cubs."

“We are happy that the number of tigers in the state has increased,” he said, adding that the population of their prey had also increased.

“We have noticed that animals that used to be targets of hunters such as rusa (deer), kijang (barking deer) and kancil (mousedeer) had also increased,” he said.

Abu Bakar added that heightened surveillance of the national park had also helped the wildlife population to grow.

“We are working closely with our counterparts in (neighbouring) Pahang to ensure poachers do not hunt in our forests,” he said.

Abu Bakar, however, said poaching had not been eradicated.

“We still have hunters breaching our borders. Hopefully, with the help of the public and increased surveillance, we will be able to stop them,” he said.

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Scientists find damage to coral near BP well

Cain Burdeau, Associated Press Yahoo News 5 Nov 10;

NEW ORLEANS – For the first time, federal scientists have found damage to deep sea coral and other marine life on the ocean floor several miles from the blown-out BP well — a strong indication that damage from the spill could be significantly greater than officials had previously acknowledged.

Tests are needed to verify that the coral died from oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, but the chief scientist who led the government-funded expedition said Friday he was convinced it was related.

"What we have at this point is the smoking gun," said Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who led the expedition aboard the Ronald Brown, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.

"There is an abundance of circumstantial data that suggests that what happened is related to the recent oil spill," Fisher said.

For the government, the findings were a departure from earlier statements. Until now, federal teams have painted relatively rosy pictures about the spill's effect on the sea and its ecosystem, saying they had not found any damage on the ocean floor.

In early August, a federal report said that nearly 70 percent of the 170 million gallons of oil that gushed from the well into the sea had dissolved naturally, or was burned, skimmed, dispersed or captured, with almost nothing left to see — at least on top of the water. The report was blasted by scientists.

Most of the Gulf's bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths.

Coral is essential to the Gulf because it provides a habitat for fish and other organisms such as snails and crabs, making any large-scale death of coral a problem for many species. It might need years, or even decades, to grow back.

"It's cold on the bottom, and things don't grow as quickly," said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi. He was not on the expedition.

Montagna said the affected area is so large, and scientists' ability to explore it with underwater robots so limited that "we'll never be able to see everything that happened down there."

Using a robot called Jason II, researchers found the dead coral in an area measuring up to 130 feet by 50 feet, about 4,600 feet under the surface.

"These kinds of coral are normally beautiful, brightly colored," Fisher said. "What you saw was a field of brown corals with exposed skeleton — white, brittle stars tightly wound around the skeleton, not waving their arms like they usually do."

Fisher described the soft and hard coral they found seven miles southwest of the well as an underwater graveyard. He said oil probably passed over the coral and killed it.

The coral has "been dying for months," he said. "What we are looking at is a combination of dead gooey tissues and sediment. Gunk is a good word for what it is."

Eric Cordes, a Temple University marine scientist on the expedition, said his colleagues have identified about 25 other sites in the vicinity of the well where similar damage may have occurred. An expedition is planned for next month to explore those sites.

When coral is threatened, its first reaction is to release large amounts of mucus, "and anything drifting by in the water column would get bound up in this mucus," Cordes said. "And that is what this (brown) substance would be: A variety of things bound up in the mucus."

About 90 percent of the large coral was damaged, Fisher said.

The expedition was funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The mission was part of a four-year study of the Gulf's depths, but it was expanded this year to look at oil spill damage.

In a statement released Thursday night, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco said the expedition underscored that the damage to marine life from the oil spill is "not easily seen." She added that more research was needed to gain a "comprehensive understanding of impacts to the Gulf."

"Given the toxic nature of oil, and the unprecedented amount of oil spilled, it would be surprising if we did not find damage," she said.

NOAA did not provide any officials or scientists of its own who went on the expedition. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said its researcher on the expedition was unavailable.

Cordes said that the expedition did not find dramatic visual evidence of coral damage in other sites north of the well. But he said it was premature to say coral elsewhere in the Gulf was not damaged.

The new findings, though, could mean long-term trouble for the coral southwest of the well, where computer models and research cruises mapped much of the deepwater oil.

Referring to one type of coral known as "gorgonians," Cordes said he had never seen them "come back from having lost so much tissue. It would have to be re-colonization from scratch."

___

On The Web:

Photos of the dead coral: http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/photos/research-photos/biology/fisher-photos/

More about the NOAA expedition: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/10lophelia/welcome.html

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Mexico, UN see some progress in climate talks

Reuters ALertNet 6 Nov 10;
* No big breakthrough expected at next month's summit
* Progress on issue of funding for developing nations

MEXICO CITY, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Talks over new accords to fight climate change have made progress on some issues ahead of a global summit in Cancun, Mexico, later this month but organizers downplayed on Friday the chances of a breakthrough.

Hosts Mexico and the United Nations offered few details on the progress after two days of meetings in Mexico City but said they were optimistic a package of agreements to drive forward the process would be reached in Cancun.

"Governments have become aware there is no magic solution, there is no ultimate agreement that will solve everything but that this is a gradual process that has to be done step by step," Christiana Figueres, the United Nations' top climate official, said at a news conference.

Figueres and Mexican officials said progress had been made on setting up funding for developing nations to cope with the effects of climate change and fund clean development as well as the thorny issue of measuring and verifying countries emissions of greenhouse gases but that a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol was farther off.

Prospects for the Cancun summit have dimmed in recent months amid a near-deadlock in the 194-nation talks ahead of the meeting.

The Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations' main tool for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, expires at the end of 2012. Talks in Copenhagen last year foundered in part over wide disagreements between over how deeply and how fast rich countries should cut their own emissions beyond 2012.

More than 120 nations agreed in Copenhagen to find a way to limit the rise in average global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) but significant differences remain over how to achieve that goal.

Losses by President Barak Obama's Democratic Party in the U.S. congressional elections this week has further dented expectations of significant accords in Cancun.

A lack of U.S. legislation to cut greenhouse gas emissions may hit plans to raise a promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor nations cope with climate change. That plan partly hinges on curbs on emissions to push up carbon prices.

Mexican officials have tried to remain optimistic, however, pointing to renewed trust between negotiators after the acrimonious end to the last climate summit in Copenhagen.

The slow pace of the U.N. talks has prompted speculation that smaller groups, such as the Group of 20 or the U.S.-led Major Economies Forum (MEF) may emerge as possible avenues to agree climate action, a move opposed by the United Nations as well as many small countries that stand to be the worst hit by climate change. (Reporting by Robert Campbell; Editing by Eric Beech)

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