Best of our wild blogs: 15 Nov 15

Butterflies of Singapore 2nd Edition
Butterflies of Singapore

Night Walk At Venus Drive (13 Nov 2015)
Beetles@SG BLOG

SIIA Seminar – Fighting the Haze: Insights from Indonesia’s worst-hit provinces
Green Drinks Singapore

Singapore court: illicit timber trafficking through our ports not our problem
mongabay

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Iceland's leader goes bird-watching on visit here

Lim Yan Liang, The Straits Times AsiaOne 15 Nov 15;

Flying from as far as Siberia and Alaska, Arctic birds make the annual sojourn to Singapore during their year-end migratory season.

Yesterday, Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson spied some of the 118 species that make a stopover in Singapore at this time of year when he visited the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve.

His tour of Sungei Buloh came after his visit to the Centre for Liveable Cities, a local think-tank on urban governance and management.

He also went to oil rig builder Keppel Fels' Yard, and had a meeting with officials of Keppel Offshore and Marine's officials.

Dr Grimsson, whose three-day state visit to Singapore ended yesterday, capped his trip here with a public lecture on clean energy, climate and the future of the Arctic region. He spoke about the global nature of climate change and how Iceland's move towards lowering carbon dioxide emissions cannot be a unique story, but should be a trend adopted by more for the future.

The lecture, given under the Yale-NUS College President's Speaker series, was attended by 300 people, most of who were students and faculty members.

The need for greater global environmental responsibility and a shift towards sustainable energy sources was a recurring theme in the speeches he made during his visit to Singapore.

Dr Grimsson, accompanied by his wife, Ms Dorrit Moussaieff, left for home yesterday evening.

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Indonesia: Disaster agency allocates Rp 150b for floods

thejakartapost.com 14 Nov 15;

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) has allocated Rp 150 billion (US $11 million) for flood and landslide prevention and mitigation efforts in the upcoming rainy season.

Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, BNPB spokesman, said on Friday that the funding came from the Rp 2.5 trillion allocated in the 2015 budget of the agency for all kinds of disasters.

He said the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) had predicted that the rainy season would arrive in most of areas of Indonesia in December and would peak in January. Floods and landslides are the disasters most likely to occur during the rainy season.

"The anticipation of disasters must be well prepared because disasters are currently seen as ad hoc [events]. People only focus on the emergency response," he said in a press statement.

Besides allocating funds, the measures also include a coordinating meeting with all ministries, institutions and regional heads to discuss disaster management, contigencies, training and technical issues.

Sutopo said disasters related to the rainy season had a major impact on society. (rin)

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