Best of our wild blogs: 15 Aug 14

First public walks at Sisters Islands
from wild shores of singapore

What we’ve been up to in August 2014?
from Neo Mei Lin

Singapore Common Bugs
from The Singapore Writing Homemaker

Elephant poaching soars as Sumatran forests turn into plantations
from Mongabay.com news by Morgan Erickson-Davis

Indonesia cracks down on illegal burning, investigates more suspect companies from Mongabay.com news by Morgan Erickson-Davis

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Six new precincts among plans to enhance Sentosa’s appeal

Kelly Ng Channel NewsAsia 15 Aug 14;

SINGAPORE: Sentosa is calling for ideas to boost its appeal to visitors and its plans include creating six precincts, which will have distinct offerings that cater for different groups, out of its existing clusters.

For example, the Palawan Beach precinct will be dedicated to family-centric activities, while the Siloso Beach stretch will feature “thrilling and adventurous recreational activities for the young and energetic”.

The Imbiah Lookout precinct will feature nature and heritage, and the Fort Siloso and Siloso Point area, which includes the preserved coastal fort and the Underwater World Singapore attractions, will offer visitors a “learning journey”.

The two other precincts singled out for enhancement are the North-South Link cluster, which connects Resorts World Sentosa and the beaches, and the Siloso Beach area.

The planning directives for each of the precincts were detailed in an Expression of Interest document (EOI) Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) posted last month on the government procurement website GeBIZ, which was first reported in Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao on Thursday (Aug 14).

SDC divisional director for property Benjamin Chia said the company is seeking consultancy services to “map its near- and mid-term development plans for the different precincts”.

“The outcome of the consultation process would be a suite of localised development projects within these precincts for SDC to evaluate and decide whether to embark on,” Mr Chia added.

Other plans include a “well-choreographed and comfortable” walking experience along the North-South link precinct. The consultant will also need to come up with proposals to enhance connectivity on the island, between the precincts as well as within them “to entice guests to walk and enjoy the island”.

The project will be carried out in three phases and a different firm will be appointed as the consultant for each phase. Subsequently, these firms may form strategic partnerships with SDC to support precinct-planning over the next five years.

Submissions will be evaluated based on a firm’s financial standing, resources and expertise, as well as track record. The EOI closes on Friday and shortlisted firms will be called to tender their proposals after evaluation.

Sentosa has surpassed the 20-million mark in terms of annual visitors, its latest figures showed.

Between April 1, 2012, and March 31 last year, a total of 20.5 million people visited the island. New attractions include a new night show called Wings of Time, which debuted at Siloso Beach in June.

Other offerings in the pipeline include Singapore’s first Madame Tussauds wax museum, which is slated to open later this year. Next year, visitors can look forward to KidZania, an indoor theme park for children, and the world’s first double swing bungy.

- CNA/cy

Six new precincts among plans to enhance Sentosa’s appeal
Kelly Ng Today Online 15 Aug 14;

SINGAPORE — Sentosa is calling for ideas to boost its appeal to visitors and its plans include creating six precincts, which will have distinct offerings that cater for different groups, out of its existing clusters.

For example, the Palawan Beach precinct will be dedicated to family-centric activities, while the Siloso Beach stretch will feature “thrilling and adventurous recreational activities for the young and energetic”.

The Imbiah Lookout precinct will feature nature and heritage, and the Fort Siloso and Siloso Point area, which includes the preserved coastal fort and the Underwater World Singapore attractions, will offer visitors a “learning journey”.

The two other precincts singled out for enhancement are the North-South Link cluster, which connects Resorts World Sentosa and the beaches, and the Tanjong Beach area.

The planning directives for each of the precincts were detailed in an Expression of Interest document (EOI) Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) posted last month on the government procurement website GeBIZ, which was first reported in Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao yesterday.

SDC divisional director for property Benjamin Chia said the company is seeking consultancy services to “map its near- and mid-term development plans for the different precincts”.

“The outcome of the consultation process would be a suite of localised development projects within these precincts for SDC to evaluate and decide on whether to embark on,” Mr Chia added.

Other plans include a “well-choreographed and comfortable” walking experience along the North-South link precinct. The consultant will also need to come up with proposals to enhance connectivity on the island, between the precincts as well as within them “to entice guests to walk and enjoy the island”.

The project will be carried out in three phases and a different firm will be appointed as the consultant for each phase. Subsequently, these firms may form strategic partnerships with SDC to support precinct-planning over the next five years.

Submissions will be evaluated based on a firm’s financial standing, resources and expertise, as well as track record. The EOI closes today and shortlisted firms will be called to tender their proposals after evaluation.

Sentosa has surpassed the 20-million mark in terms of annual visitors, its latest figures showed.

Between April 1, 2012, and March 31 last year, a total of 20.5 million people visited the island. New attractions include a new night show called Wings of Time, which debuted at Siloso Beach in June.

Other offerings in the pipeline include Singapore’s first Madame Tussauds wax museum, which is slated to open later this year. Next year, visitors can look forward to KidZania, an indoor theme park for children, and the world’s first double swing bungy.

Sentosa to get major facelift
Janice Tai The Straits Times AsiaOne 17 Aug 14;

SINGAPORE - Sentosa will be given a makeover in the next five years in a bid to draw more locals and tourists to the island.

Attractions and activities for visitors will be grouped according to themes and given designated areas within Sentosa.

For example, the Palawan Beach area will be for family activities with its upcoming Family Entertainment Centre, while Siloso Beach will offer lively beach bars and adrenaline-pumping rides for the adventurous and trendy. Imbiah Lookout will give nature and heritage lovers the greenery and serenity they seek.

Sentosa Development Corp (SDC), which manages the island, is calling for developers to indicate their interest in developing the island on the Government's online purchasing portal, GeBIZ, in an exercise that ends today.

According to SDC's project brief, six existing sites, which make up a third of the island's land area, have been earmarked for transformation - the North-South Link Precinct, Fort Siloso and Siloso Point, Siloso Beach, Palawan Beach, Tanjong Beach and Imbiah Lookout.

SDC also asked developers to submit ideas on how space on the 500ha island can be better used and how people can get from one area to another more easily.

"We would like to gain insights into innovative ways of enhancing infrastructure, landscape and lighting, as well as strategies for more efficient land use," said Mr Benjamin Chia, divisional director of property at SDC.

Experts say having themed zones, each with its own distinct identity, will be crucial as the island, which already has 33 attractions and nearly 200 food and retail outlets, is getting more crowded. "It will help distribute the crowd according to age group, and allow better land and infrastructure planning, such as having more child-friendly facilities in areas that are meant for families," said Dr Michael Chiam, senior lecturer in tourism at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

The five-year plan will be executed in three phases, starting with the North-South Link Precinct and ending with Imbiah Lookout.

Once work on the North-South Link Precinct is done, visitors should be able to walk easily from the North-South boulevard to the beaches and other zones.

The Fort Siloso and Siloso Point Precinct, which houses the country's coastal defence installation, will be a draw for history buffs. Beach lovers who want to see more of nature in a tranquil setting can head to Tanjong Beach.

The last time the island received a makeover was in 2006, when a new walkway and a children's splashing zone were added to Palawan Beach. That mini rejuvenation alone came with an $11 million bill.

SDC said it is unable to estimate the budget for this project as the developers have yet to be appointed.

Visitorship to the island has jumped since Resorts World Sentosa opened in 2010, rising from 6.1 million in 2008 to 20.5 million last year. Figures could go higher with the opening of long-awaited attractions such as wax museum Madame Tussauds this year and Singapore's first bungee jump facility next year.

"These changes are all exciting and good, but I hope the crowds will be better managed as there is always a bottleneck at the tram stations," said social service executive Cheryl Ong, 27, who goes to Sentosa for beach volleyball every week.

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Palm oil in west Africa: Grow but cherish your environment

Companies wanting to make palm oil face angry environmentalists
The Economist 16 Aug 14;

FOR half a century, Indonesia and Malaysia have accounted for the vast majority of the world’s exports of palm oil. But now investors are flocking to west Africa to secure land for rival plantations. Environmentalists say the forests of South-East Asia have been massively despoiled and are warning west African governments not to follow suit. A growth-versus-conservation battle is in the offing.

The oil palm is native to west Africa, but most of today’s production is small-scale; exports barely exist. Yet restrictions on logging and the acquisition of land in Malaysia and Indonesia are pushing investors into Africa, where concessions for new plantations are more freely available. In the past decade, politicians in west Africa and countries of the Congo basin have leased out around 1.8m hectares of land for palm-oil plantations, according to Hardman, a London-based research company. Another 1.4m hectares is being sought. Foreign companies sniffing around include groups such as Wilmar, Olam, Sime Darby, Golden Veroleum and Equatorial Palm Oil.

Demand for palm oil, whose annual global production is valued at around $50 billion, is soaring; consumption may triple between 2000 and 2050. The oil is taken from the oil palm’s red fruit and is used in roughly half of all packaged supermarket products, from margarine and ice cream to shampoo and cosmetics. It is increasingly used as a biodiesel, too.

But Africans are fast learning that it is a controversial business. Malaysia and Indonesia have been castigated for the environmental damage caused by palm oil. Deforestation has increased carbon emissions and destroyed the habitat of rare breeds of animals such as orangutans. Africa faces similar problems. A recent academic report noted that more than half of oil-palm concessions in Africa infringe on the habitat of great apes.

When a new concession is signed, civil-society organisations often complain that land has been “grabbed”. Weak land titles and hazy lines between customary and state ownership can result in local peasants being booted off their land and becoming impoverished, they say. Equatorial Palm Oil is just one company facing criticism. In Liberia, among other countries, the palm-oil industry is being hampered by such issues. “The country is producing very limited quantities of palm oil and indeed has very limited planted area, yet concessions were granted as early as 2006,” says Doug Hawkins of Hardman.

Some of the would-be investors in African palm oil do indeed have shoddy track records. Two years ago Newsweek’s “green ranking” of the world’s 500 biggest publicly traded companies judged Wilmar, a Singaporean group which owns plantations in Nigeria and Ghana, as the least environmentally sound. Potential investors in west Africa are becoming nervous. In 2012 Norway’s government pension fund pulled out of 23 palm-oil firms deemed “unsustainable”, including Wilmar and Golden Agri-Resources, though both are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil. This Swiss-based coalition of growers, processors, food firms, investors and green charities, with a secretariat in Malaysia, tries to persuade the palm-oil industry to cherish the environment.

Some commercial growers in west Africa have faced protests by locals. In certain cases, the police have been accused of using force to quash them. Last year Herakles Capital, an investment fund in New York, had to slim down its plans for a plantation in Cameroon that is said to be ten times the acreage of Manhattan.

Many investors say they have become more sensitive towards villagers’ worries and will clear forest only if it has already been “degraded”. In Gabon, for instance, Olam has returned much of the land allocated to it by the government because it was unsuitable for agriculture. It says it is developing less than half of the terrain it has retained, setting aside the remainder for community use or conservation purposes. The group says it is not developing any plantations in areas that are already permanently inhabited.

“If Liberia could get compensation for its forest being one of the last in sub-Saharan Africa, then we would take it,” says Liberia’s finance minister, Amara Konneh. “Of course we are worried about the ecological consequences. But we have to grow the economy. We have to create jobs for our own people. How we do it sustainably is where we are struggling.”

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Africa: Poachers Force Massive Rhino Evacuation

Tia Ghose LiveScience.com Yahoo News 14 Aug 14;

Hundreds of endangered rhinos will be evacuated from one of the largest national parks in Africa, according to the South African government.

The evacuation effort aims to protect the rhinos in South Africa's Kruger National Park from poachers, by moving the animals away from regions of high population density to safer areas.

The move comes in response to the country's rising problem with illegal poaching. Last year, poachers killed a record 1,004 rhinos in South Africa — more than double the number slaughtered in 2011 and astronomically higher than the 13 killed in 2007, according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). More than 60 percent of the slaughtered rhinos lived in Kruger National Park.

The growing demand for rhino horn comes mainly from Asian countries, where locals prize the ivory as a status symbol and sometimes use it in traditional medicine for ailments ranging from gout to rheumatism. [Black Market Horns: Image from a Rhino Bust]

Threatened species

Black rhinoceros are considered critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which means the animals face an incredibly high risk of extinction in the wild. The IUCN categorizes white rhinos as "near-threatened," which means they may be at risk for extinction in the future. In total, about 21,000 rhinos from both species lived in South Africa in 2012, South African environment minister Edna Molewa said in a statement.

With the evacuation, officials aim to move rhinos from the park's vulnerable eastern edge, where poaching is rampant, to safer places across the country. Though the rhinos' final homes haven't been decided yet, the government is considering other national and provincial parks, safer spots in Kruger National Park, private reserves, and even other countries. The evacuation will also break up dense rhino populations into less populous groups; the dense groups face higher mortality rates and breeding pressures, Molewa said.

"The complimentary approach of strategic relocations from the Kruger National Park and the creation of rhino strongholds will allow the total rhino population size of South Africa to continue to grow," Molewa said in a statement.

Other approaches

The government is also stepping up its use of DNA analysis to tie rhino horn back to individual slaughtered animals, which in turn could help officials nab poachers. The country arrested many more poachers in the 2013/2014 financial year than in previous periods, according to the South African Department of Environmental Affairs. One notorious poacher, Mandla Chauke, was sentenced to 77 years in prison, department officials said.

But South Africa has other tools to fight the poaching problem. Last year, the government proposed selling all of its confiscated rhino ivory, in hopes that flooding the rhino horn black market would lower prices and reduce economic incentives for poaching.

This isn't the first time that rhinos have been evacuated. In 2011, 19 rhinos from East South Africa were airlifted to another region to protect them from poachers.

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Central America braces for drought-linked food crisis

Anastasia Moloney PlanetArk 15 Aug 14;

Low rainfall linked to the El Nino weather phenomenon has led to drought in parts of Central America, causing widespread damage to crops, shortages and rising prices of food, and worsening hunger among the region's poor.

An unusually hot season and extended dry spells have brought drought to areas in eastern and western Guatemala and El Salvador, southern Honduras and northern and central Nicaragua, destroying swathes of bean and maize crops, the region's staple foods, and putting pressure on subsistence farmers and food prices.

"Extremely poor households across large areas of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador will experience a rapid deterioration in their food security in early 2015.

"Atypically high levels of humanitarian assistance, possibly the highest since Hurricane Mitch in 1998, will likely be required in order to avoid a food crisis," said a recent report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Thousands of families in the region have become too poor to buy enough food for survival because poor harvests are pushing up prices of staple foods while coffee producers are hiring fewer seasonal coffee pickers and paying lower wages because of a coffee leaf rust or roya epidemic across Central America.

In Nicaragua and Honduras, red bean prices rose by up to 129 percent between January and June 2014, according to FEWS NET.

Other livelihoods in Central America, including fishing and livestock breeding, have also been hard hit by the recent drought and the El Nino weather phenomenon, FEWS NET said.

El Nino, which can last more than a year, significantly raises surface temperatures in the central and eastern areas of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon linked to major climate fluctuations around the world.

In response to the drought, the Guatemalan government has said it will begin distributing 4,000 tonnes of food aid to more than 170,000 families affected by the drought from early October, using government and United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) food reserves.

One of the poorest countries in Central America, Guatemala already struggles to feed its population, particularly those impoverished indigenous communities living in rural areas.

Around half Guatemala's population of 15 million lives in poverty and the country has the world's fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition, which affects almost half the children under five, according to the WFP.

In neighboring Honduras, the government is distributing food, including rice, beans and flour, and vitamin supplements to 76,000 families, many subsistence farmers, affected by the drought.

(Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, covers underreported humanitarian, human rights, corruption and climate change issues. Visit www.trust.org)

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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Study blames humans for most of melting glaciers

SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press Yahoo News 14 Aug 14;

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than two-thirds of the recent rapid melting of the world's glaciers can be blamed on humans, a new study finds.

Scientists looking at glacier melt since 1851 didn't see a human fingerprint until about the middle of the 20th century. Even then only one-quarter of the warming wasn't from natural causes.

But since 1991, about 69 percent of the rapidly increasing melt was man-made, said Ben Marzeion, a climate scientist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

"Glaciers are really shrinking rapidly now," he said. "I think it's fair to say most of it is man-made."

Scientists fault global warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas as well as changes in land use near glaciers and soot pollution. Glaciers in Alaska and the Alps in general have more human-caused melting than the global average, Marzeion said.

The study is published Thursday in the journal Science.

The research is the first to calculate just how much of the glacial melting can be attributed to people and "the jump from about a quarter to roughly 70 percent of total glacier mass loss is significant and concerning," said University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysicist Regine Hock, who wasn't part of the study.

Over the last two decades, about 295 billion tons (269 billion metric tons) of ice is melting each year on average due to human causes and about 130 billion tons (121 million metric tons) a year are melting because of natural causes, Marzeion calculated.

Glaciers alone add to about four-tenths of an inch of sea level rise every decade, along with even bigger increases from melting ice sheets — which are different than glaciers — and the expansion of water with warmer temperatures.

Marzeion and colleagues ran multiple computer simulations to see how much melting there would be from all causes and then did it again to see how much melting there would be if only natural causes were included. The difference is what was caused by humans.

Scientists aren't quite certain what natural causes started glaciers shrinking after the end of the Little Ice Age in the middle of the 19th century, but do know what are human-causes: climate change, soot, and local changes in land use.

There is a sizable margin of error so the 69 percent human caused can be as low as 45 percent or as high as 93 percent, but likely in the middle.

"This study makes perfect sense," said Pennsylvania State University glacier expert Richard Alley, who wasn't part of the research. "The authors have quantified what I believe most scientists would have expected."

Not all of the human-caused melting is from global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, but climate change is the biggest factor, said Ted Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The study showed that it took time for global warming and other factors to build up and cause melting. That lag effect means the world is already locked into more rapid melting from the warming that has already occurred, Marzeion and Alley said.

Science: http://www.sciencemag.org

Man-made warming becomes main cause of glacier retreat, study says
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 15 Aug 14;

Man-made warming becomes main cause of glacier retreat, study says Photo: Mariana Bazo
A view of the lake formed by meltwater from the Pastoruri glacier, as seen from atop the glacier in Huaraz, September 19, 2013.
Photo: Mariana Bazo

Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have become the dominant cause of melting in glaciers from the Alps to the Andes that is raising world sea levels, a study said on Thursday.

Human emissions accounted for an estimated 69 percent of loss of ice from glaciers from 1991-2010, overtaking natural climate variations that had been the main driver of a retreat since the mid-19th century, researchers wrote in the journal Science.

Until now, scientists have struggled to quantify the impact of human behavior on glaciers because the frozen rivers of ice take decades, perhaps centuries, to respond to rising temperatures and shifts in snow and rainfall.

The study published on Thursday used historical observations of glaciers around the world, except in Antarctica, twinned with computer models to simulate all factors that could explain the retreat. It found that natural variations were not enough on their own, meaning man-made greenhouse gases played an increasing role.

"This is more evidence of human influence on the climate," Ben Marzeion, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria and lead author of the study, told Reuters.

The scientists estimated that human influences accounted for only about 25 percent of glaciers' total retreat since 1850 - meaning that natural swings in the climate, such as changes in the sun's output, have long been dominant.

LITTLE ICE AGE

Many glaciers grew during a period known as the Little Ice Age from 1350 to 1850, perhaps caused by a natural decline in the sun's output or sun-dimming volcanic eruptions.

Michael Zemp, head of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich, said snowfall declined after around 1850. Rising temperatures from about the 1890s, when wider burning of coal meant more greenhouse gases, hastened the thaw.

"The big majority of glaciers have been retreating over the past century," he told Reuters. "We even have an accelerated retreat in recent decades." Glaciers have also varied widely - many Alpine glaciers advanced in the 1970s and 1980s.

Thursday's study estimated that water from melting glaciers has contributed a total of 13.3 cm (5 inches) from 1851-2010 to rising sea levels. Without human influences the rise would still have been 9.9 cm (4 inches).

Zemp said that greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere meant that glacier retreat and related sea level rise would continue for decades, even if emissions were to stop now.

Melting glaciers, especially in the Himalayas, also supply water vital to millions of people. A Chinese newspaper said that Tibet was warmer over the past 50 years than at any time in the past 2,000.

Pinning down a human influence on temperatures has been easier. A U.N. scientific panel said last year that it was at least 95 percent probable that mankind was the main cause of higher surface temperatures since 1950.

(Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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