Life History of the Common Tit
from Butterflies of Singapore
Mandai Park Connector On 29 Aug
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature
Pin-Striped Tit Babbler: Tail moult?
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Chek Jawa and the Lost Diamond Ring
from wild shores of singapore
Baby stonefish at Sentosa
from wonderful creation
Elisabeth Rosenthal The New York Times 10 Sep 11;
For sharks, life at the top of the ocean food chain is becoming safer — at least from human predators.
The last 12 months have seen a flurry of laws, regulations and industry actions to end the international trade in the age-old delicacy, including bans on shark fin sales in Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and parts of Canada.
Last week, the California Senate also voted to ban the sale or possession of shark fins — a billion-dollar global trade that has led to the brutal deaths of tens of millions of sharks a year and resulted in many open-ocean shark species being threatened with extinction. The Bahamas and Honduras have prohibited shark fishing in the last two years.
“We’re really enthusiastic to see good things finally starting to happen for sharks,” said Elizabeth Wilson, a marine wildlife expert at Oceana, a nonprofit conservation group that has long campaigned against the trade.
Shark fins are used to make a coveted Chinese banquet soup that can sell for over $100 a bowl. It has the ceremonial mystique of benefiting health and virility, and serving it to guests is considered to be a sign of great honor and respect.
In an increasingly prosperous Asia, the market for the soup has grown drastically, causing overfishing around the globe. The presence of the once-common hammerhead in large parts of the western Atlantic, for example, has decreased by up to 89 percent over the last 25 years.
The spate of new protections is a result of efforts by environmental groups to reduce market demand for shark fins, because international treaties have failed to adequately curb shark fishing.
The Food Network recently removed all shark recipes from its offerings, and the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has been pressing Chinese restaurants in London to renounce the soup this year.
Even in Asia, where shark fins and soup are ubiquitous, campaigns to end shark fin dining by celebrities like the basketball star Yao Ming of China and the conservation group WildAid have had effects. Sales have been reduced by about one-third in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan, experts say, though consumption is still growing on the Chinese mainland. Ali Baba, a kind of Chinese eBay, no longer accepts shark fin transactions.
“This has been a slow-boil campaign because the traditional methods failed,” said Peter Knights, executive director of WildAid, which worked with Mr. Yao. “We went to consumers because it was a crisis and nothing else was dealing with it.”
Mr. Knights pointed out that the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which restricts trade on items derived from endangered or threatened species, denied protection to five shark species last year after nations that profit from the trade voted against it.
Shark populations cannot tolerate intensive fishing because sharks have few offspring and often do not reproduce until they are over 10 years old. Even by conservative estimates, more than 10 million shark fins moved through Hong Kong in 2008, the main distribution center for the trade. Fins sell for over $300 a pound.
Many marine biologists support tougher regulation of shark fishing itself.
“These bans go part way, but you’re still allowed to fish sharks without a permit,” said John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “In North Carolina, there are shark derbies for fun, where they are hung by their tails. We think it’s O.K. to do that with this ocean predator, but we wouldn’t dream of doing it to a terrestrial animal like a bear.”
As a halfway measure to limit the fin trade, a growing number of countries, including the United States as of last December, prohibit the removal of shark fins at sea. Requiring fishing boats to take whole sharks to the dock limits the size of their catch and allows the authorities to inspect for endangered species. In the traditional shark fin trade, fishermen slice off the valued fins from a living shark and dump the still writhing body back in the water.
But shark-finning prohibitions are hard to enforce because they involve dockside inspections of numerous small boats and a sack of lucrative fins is easily hidden. When Dr. Bruno was at his university’s new research station in the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador this summer, he was summoned by local authorities to help identify sharks on a boat they had seized with more than 350 carcasses, fins already partly detached. Ecuadorean law also bans finning at sea.
“This was in the Galápagos, a national marine reserve and national heritage site,” Dr. Bruno said. “If it’s even happening there, that shows you the size of the problem.”
The California ban, which has passed both chambers and now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, would have a major impact on the availability of shark fins in the United States because most are imported from Hong Kong via California. The legislation bans imports as of Jan. 1, 2012, but allows those who possess shark fins to dispose of their stocks until June 30, 2013.
Though one of the bill’s sponsors is Paul Fong, a Chinese-born assemblyman from Sunnyvale, some Asian-Americans in the state have objected that the measure is discriminatory, singling out an important cultural tradition. But some surveys have shown that 70 percent of Asian-Americans in California support the bill.
Decreasing demand from the United States and Hong Kong may not offer enough of a respite for threatened shark populations if the popularity of shark fin soup continues to grow on the Chinese mainland.
In a commercial made by WildAid, Asian diners at a fancy restaurant begin pushing away their soup bowls as a shark in a nearby tank bleeds from the site where his fin was removed. “Remember,” says Mr. Yao, the retired basketball player, “when the buying stops, the killing can, too.”
Mr. Knights, of WildAid, said that if the decimation of shark populations continued, all the money in the world would not provide shark fins for diners. “This is unsustainable,” he said, “and the question is, do you end it now or do you wait until there are no sharks left?”
They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist
Andrew Marszal The Independent 11 Sep 11;
Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.
The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be "a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem". Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that "we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years".
"We're creating a situation where the organisms that make coral reefs are becoming so compromised by what we're doing that many of them are going to be extinct, and the others are going to be very, very rare," Professor Sale says. "Because of that, they aren't going to be able to do the construction which leads to the phenomenon we call a reef. We've wiped out a lot of species over the years. This will be the first time we've actually eliminated an entire ecosystem."
Coral reefs are important for the immense biodiversity of their ecosystems. They contain a quarter of all marine species, despite covering only 0.1 per cent of the world's oceans by area, and are more diverse even than the rainforests in terms of diversity per acre, or types of different phyla present.
Recent research into coral reefs' highly diverse and unique chemical composition has found many compounds useful to the medical industry, which could be lost if present trends persist. New means of tackling cancer developed from reef ecosystems have been announced in the past few months, including a radical new treatment for leukaemia derived from a reef-dwelling sponge. Another possible application of compounds found in coral as a powerful sunblock has also been mooted.
And coral reefs are of considerable economic value to humans, both as abundant fishing resources and – often more lucratively – as tourist destinations. About 850 million people live within 100km of a reef, of which some 275 million are likely to depend on the reef ecosystems for nutrition or livelihood. Fringing reefs can also help to protect low-lying islands and coastal regions from extreme weather, absorbing waves before they reach vulnerable populations.
Carbon emissions generated by human activity, especially our heavy use of fossils fuels, are the biggest cause of the anticipated rapid decline, impacting on coral reefs in two main ways. Climate change increases ocean surface temperatures, which have already risen by 0.67C in the past century. This puts corals under enormous stress and leads to coral bleaching, where the photosynthesising algae on which the reef-building creatures depend for energy disappear. Deprived of these for even a few weeks, the corals die.
On top of this comes ocean acidification. Roughly one-third of the extra carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere is absorbed through the ocean surface, acidifying shallower waters. A more recently recognised problem in tropical reef systems, the imbalance created makes it harder for reef organisms to retrieve the minerals needed to build their carbonaceous skeletons. "If they can't build their skeletons – or they have to put a lot more energy into building them relative to all the other things they need to do, like reproduce – it has a detrimental effect on the coral reefs," says Paul Johnston of the University of Exeter, and founder of the UK's Greenpeace Research Laboratories.
An important caveat to the book's predictions is that the corals themselves – the tiny organisms largely responsible for creating reefs – may be lucky enough to survive the destruction, if past mass extinction episodes are anything to go by. "Although corals are ancient animals and have been around for hundreds of millions of years, there have been periods of reefs, and periods where there are no reefs," explains Mark Spalding, of the US-based environmental group Nature Conservancy, and the University of Cambridge. "When climatic conditions are right they build these fantastic structures, but when they're not they wait in the wings, in little refuges, as a rather obscure invertebrate."
The gaps between periods in which reefs are present have been long even in geological terms, described in the book as "multimillion-year pauses". And reef disappearance has tended to precede wider mass extinction events, offering an ominous "canary in the environmental coal mine" for the present day, according to the author. "People have been talking about current biodiversity loss as the Holocene mass extinction, meaning that the losses of species that are occurring now are in every way equivalent to the mass extinctions of the past," Professor Sale says. "I think there is every possibility that is what we are seeing."
About 20 per cent of global coral reefs have already been lost in the past few decades. Mass bleaching events leading to widespread coral death are a relatively recent phenomenon; though scientists have been studying coral reefs in earnest since the 1950s, mass bleaching was first observed only in 1983.
Dr Spalding, who witnessed the catastrophic 1998 mass bleaching in the Indian Ocean first-hand, says: "It was a shocking wake-up call for the world of science, and a shocking wake-up for me to be actually there as we watched literally 80 to 90 per cent of all the corals die on the reefs of the Seychelles and other islands in a few weeks." That single event destroyed 16 per cent of the world's coral.
But according to the book's author: "The 1998 bleaching was spectacular because it was so extensive and so conspicuous. But there have been mass bleachings that have been global since then: 2005 was bad; 2010 was bad. The visual appearance is not nearly as severe as it was in 1998, simply because there is less coral around."
These dramatic episodes coincide with unusual weather patterns such as El Niño, but are increasing in severity and frequency due to climate change. As such, tackling global warming is the most urgent solution advocated by the book. "If we can keep CO2 concentrations below 450 parts per million we would be able to save something resembling coral reefs," Professor Sale says. "They wouldn't be the coral reefs of the 1950s or 1960s, but they would be recognisably coral reefs, and they would function as reefs." The current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is about 390 parts per million, but few experts believe it will remain below 500 for long.
There are signs that local conservation efforts can make a difference. Alex Rogers, professor of conservation biology at Oxford University, says: "We know for certain that corals subject to low levels of stress are much more able to recover. So if you take away pressures like overfishing of coral reefs and pollution, this has profound effects on recovery. But what we're really doing is buying time for many of these ecosystems. If climate change continues at its current rate, they will be done for eventually."
Though not all scientists agree with the precise timescales set out by the book, the crisis is clear. "When you're talking about the destruct-ion of an entire ecosystem within one human generation, there might be some small differences in the details – it is a dramatic image and a dramatic statement," Professor Rogers says. "But the overall message we agree with. People are not taking on board the sheer speed of the changes we're seeing."
'Our Dying Planet' (University of California Press) will be published in North America tomorrow
(AFP) Google News 10 Sep 11;
KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia has complained to Indonesia about land-clearing fires in the neighbouring country that have led to a blanket of pollution and poor air quality.
Environment Minister Douglas Uggah Embas sent a letter to his Indonesian counterpart Friday about hundreds of suspected fires on Sumatra island, national news agency Bernama reported.
Indonesia's government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak law enforcement means the ban is largely ignored, and pollution regularly blankets the region.
Air quality on Friday dropped to a level deemed "unhealthy" in one area of Negeri Sembilan state, south of the capital Kuala Lumpur. Though conditions improved on Saturday, some 60 percent of the country recorded "moderate" pollution.
Uggah Embas said Indonesia had improved efforts to tackle the problem since 2005 when parts of one Malaysian state experienced pollution at highly dangerous levels.
He is expected to meet his counterpart, Gusti Muhammad Hatta, at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) gathering in Bangkok on September 18.
And he said Malaysia would push for the setting up of a regional fire fighting squad to tackle haze-related fires in ASEAN member countries.
"We will push for this unit because we need quick deployment should any member country require such assistance," he was quoted as saying.
His aides could not immediately comment on the Bernama report.
Malaysia worries over 600 Sumatra hotspots
New Straits Times 11 Sep 11;
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia expressed concern to Indonesia after satellite images detected 600 hotspots with high temperature levels in Sumatra this year.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas said his ministry sent a letter on Friday to Indonesian Environment Minister Professor Dr Gusti Muhammad Hatta.
He told Bernama that Malaysia believed Indonesia was doing its best to control the situation. "Over the past few years, they improved their responses and efforts to tackle these fires."
Uggah will meet Gusti at the Asean Ministerial Steering Committee meeting in Bangkok next Sunday.
He said the monsoon wind that brought smoke from forest fires in Sumatra caused the haze in Malaysia.
However, he said, the situation was not as bad as it was in 1997 and 2005, when the air pollutant index (API) readings hit record highs.
Asked about Malaysia's proposal for the creation of an Asean rapid fire-fighting squad to tackle haze-related fires, he said the 12th Meeting of Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution in Bangkok on Sept 22 and 22 would discuss it.
"We will push for this unit because we need quick deployment should a country require help.
"It's not just about sending firefighters to other countries; it's also about them helping us when the situation requires it."
Malaysia sent 1,000 firefighters to help Indonesia tackle forest fires in 1997 and 124 in 2005.
Malaysia declared an emergency in Sarawak in 1997 because of the haze.
In 2005, an emergency was declared in Port Klang and Kuala Selangor when the API eached 500.
Predeep Nambiar reports that the haze remains in the Klang Valley.
The API readings showed Kuala Lumpur as "moderate" (80) while Petaling Jaya and Shah Alam recorded 79 and 72.
Thirty-two areas in the country were "moderate".
The worst affected town outside the Klang Valley was Nilai, with an API reading of 96, just four points shy of the "unhealthy" category. Seremban and Port Dickson had readings of 73 and 76.
The previous day, Nilai recorded a reading of 101, the highest in the nation.
The Meteorological Service Singapore's website said there were more hotspots because of persistent dry conditions in central and southern Sumatra.
Read more: Malaysia worries over 600 Sumatra hotspots http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/2hazey/Article#ixzz1Xgx1b6ui
Bloomberg, The Nation 11 Sep 11;
Laos wants to start construction this year on the $3.8 billion (Bt115 billion) Thai-financed Xayaburi hydropower plant on the Mekong River after changing the design of the dam to placate neighbouring countries opposed to the project.
Laos completed a review of the dam recently to ease concerns in three neighbouring countries that it would harm rice production and fish catches downstream.
Environmental groups say the project will endanger the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people on the fragile Tonle Sap lake in Cambodia, and cause grave damage to rice growers in the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, which is also threatened by rising sea levels. Villagers in riverside communities in Thailand also oppose the dam, which could be the first of up to a dozen proposed on the lower Mekong.
Early this year, Hanoi recommended a 10-year delay on all hydropower projects on the river, which flows from China through Burma, Thailand and Cambodia to the delta in southern Vietnam.
Viraphonh Viravong, director-general of Laos' Ministry of Energy and Mines' Department of Electricity, said in an interview in Hanoi last week: "We would like to start toward the end of this year when the dry season comes. We want to explain and make the other countries comfortable. If they are still very negative about it, of course we will spend some more time on it."
The hydropower dam is the first among eight that Laos plans to build on the Mekong to expand Southeast Asia's smallest economy by selling power to neighbouring countries. The landlocked nation may have about 38,000 megawatts of installed capacity supply by 2020, about 15 times greater than its domestic needs, according to a presentation by state-owned Electricite du Laos at a conference in Hanoi on Thursday.
Laos presented the project review conducted by Switzerland-based Poyry Energy AG to Vietnam and plans to meet separately with Thai and Cambodian officials to discuss recommendations, Viraphonh said. Vientiane claims it can decide if it will proceed with the project at any point.
In April, Laos proposed to end a review of Xayaburi called for under a 1995 agreement between the Mekong countries requiring prior consultations before building hydropower plants on the river. Officials agreed then to hold a ministerial meeting later this year to discuss the project, but that has yet to take place.
"Laos has no right to go forward on the project by itself," said Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for International Rivers, a Berkeley, California-based non-profit group that aims to protect rivers and human rights. "By doing so it will violate the 1995 Mekong agreement and the spirit of regional cooperation."
Poyry's review found that Xayaburi's design was in accordance with preliminary design guidelines from the Mekong River Commission, an inter-governmental body, and other international design manuals, Viraphonh said in a presentation. The firm recommended improvements for sediment transport and fish-passing facilities, he said.
Poyry was confident "any potential long-term trans-boundary impacts on the downstream region would be insignificant" if the recommended design changes are implemented, according to the presentation.
"Look, this has been reviewed by an independent engineer, very famous in the world," Viraphonh said. "And if they say 'yes, you can go ahead', why not?"
Thailand agreed in December to buy 95 per cent of the electricity from the plant, which will have a capacity of 1,285 megawatts, but the Abhisit government later withdrew support for the dam amid a chorus of opposition early this year.
Ch Karnchang Plc, Thailand's third-biggest construction firm by market value, owns a 57.5-per-cent stake in Xayaburi. Supamas Trivisvavet, an executive vice president at the company, declined to comment when reached by phone on Friday.
PTT Plc, Thailand's biggest energy company, has a 25-per-cent stake, while Bangkok-based Electricity Generating Plc owns 12.5 per cent, according to company filings. PTT told the Thai stock exchange on March 1 the huge project was expected to start commercial operations in January 2019 - if it starts this year.
The proposed alterations would slightly increase the cost of the project, Viraphonh said, without providing figures. The plant would be able to meet its target completion date if work started later this year, he said.
The Mekong and its tributaries provide food, water and transportation to about 60 million people in the four countries. In a July meeting with counterparts from Mekong nations in Bali, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a pause in construction of dams on the river "until we are all able to do a better assessment of the likely consequences".
Vietnamese officials in January recommended delaying the project and moving it to a Mekong tributary because it would affect "the safety of water sources and food security for Vietnam as well as for the whole world", according to notes of the meetings. Thailand and Cambodia also favoured more studies on the dam.
A technical review in March by the Mekong River Commission found that the dam may lead to the extinction of species like the Mekong giant catfish, and "gaps in knowledge" meant the full extent of the downstream impact on fisheries was hard to estimate. The dam "will not materially affect" the quantity and timing of river flows to Cambodia and Vietnam, it believed.
Day at Mandai Mangrove
from Extraordinary Miracles and Mega Marine Survey.
110909 Macaca fascicularis
from Singapore Nature and Lornie Trail
Feeding of Sooty-headed Bulbul chicks
from Bird Ecology Study Group
Last updates for now…
from Protists in Singapore
Fences and barriers on our shores: do they work?
from wild shores of singapore
Straits Times 10 Sep 11;
IT'S coming to that time of the year again: Hazy conditions could arrive in the next two weeks, with winds from the south expected to blow smoke from Sumatra towards Singapore.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) said in an air quality update that hot spots with slight to moderate smoke haze had been detected in the central and southern parts of Sumatra.
The months from June to September are the dry season for that region, when farmers and logging companies in Sumatra and Kalimantan take to razing the land.
An NEA spokesman noted that over the past few days, dry weather conditions in the southern and central parts of Sumatra had led to an increase in hot spot activities there.
But so far, south-eastern winds had kept the smoke away from Singapore.
He added, however, that weather conditions may change over the next few days, with winds coming from the south.
'This could bring some of the haze to Singapore,' he said.
Singapore's 24-hour Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) reading at 4pm yesterday was 46, which was within the good air quality range.
PSI readings for August ranged between 28 and 53. Last October, air quality breached the unhealthy threshold of 100 - prompting calls for the Indonesian authorities to take action.
In May, a moratorium was passed in Indonesia which placed about half of the country's primary forest and peatland, or 64 million ha, off limits to development until the end of next year.
Ms Frances Seymour, director-general of the Centre for International Forestry Research, said at the time that this could lead to a reduction in the frequency and severity of haze events over time.
Indonesia is the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States, due largely to deforestation caused by illegal logging, mining and expansion by oil palm plantations.
The NEA recorded more than 380 hot spots in Sumatra on Thursday. The situation remained the same yesterday.
Asked if the haze could worsen, the NEA spokesman said the impact of the smoke haze depends on a few factors, including the strength and direction of prevailing winds and whether or not it rains.
He added: 'NEA is monitoring the situation closely and will provide updates should the air quality deteriorate.'
NG KAI LING
The Star 10 Sep 11;
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has sent a letter to Indonesia expressing concerns after 600 hotspots with high temperature levels were detected via satellite imagery in Sumatra this year.
Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Douglas Uggah Embas said that the letter was sent on Friday to his Indonesian counterpart, State Minister for Environment, Professor Dr Gusti Muhammad Hatta.
Malaysia, however, believed that Indonesia was doing its best to manage the situation, he told Bernama. "In fact in the past few years, they have improved their response and efforts to tackle such fire."
Uggah is expected to meet his Indonesian counterpart at the Asean Ministerial Steering Committee meeting in Bangkok on Sept 18.
Stressing that the haze was caused by the monsoon wind which had brought the smoke from forest fires in Sumatra to several parts of Malaysia, Uggah said the situation, however, was not as bad as it was in the past, especially in 1997 and 2005 when the air pollutant index readings hit record highs.
Asked on Malaysia's proposal for the creation of an Asean regional rapid fire-fighting squad to tackle haze-related fires in member countries, he said, the matter would be discussed at the 12th Meeting of Sub-Regional Ministerial Steering Committee on Transboundary Haze Pollution in Bangkok on Sept 22-33.
"We will push for this unit because we need quick deployment should any member country requires such assistance.
"It's not just about sending firefighters to other countries; it's also about them coming to help us when the situation requires it," he said.
Malaysia sent 1,000 firefighters to help Indonesia tackle forest fires in 1997 and 124 in 2005 for a similar mission.
An emergency was declared in Sarawak in September 1997 at the height of the haze crisis that year which was caused by forest fires in neighbouring Kalimantan.
On Aug 11, 2005, an emergency was declared in Port Klang and Kuala Selangor following the worsening haze situation due to the forest fires in Sumatra and Riau, with the air pollutant index reaching 500. - Bernama
32 areas record moderate air quality
The Star 10 Sep 11;
KUALA LUMPUR: Thirty-two areas in the country recorded moderate air quality while another 19 recorded good air quality as of 11am Saturday.
The Department of Environment (DOE) website said none of the areas recorded unhealthy air quality under the Air Pollutant Index (API).
Five areas with high API readings are Nilai, Negri Sembilan (90), Batu Muda, Kuala Lumpur (80), Petaling Jaya and Banting, Selangor (79), and Cheras, Kuala Lumpur (78).
API of 0-50 is good, 51-100 moderate, 101-200 unhealthy, 201-300 very unhealthy and over 301 hazardous.
DOE said the hazy condition is expected to continue for the next few days and advised the public to avoid open burning and put out small fires. - Bernama
Antara 9 Sep 11;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government appears to be determined to reduce the number of forest fire hot spots by 20 percent annually in order to help meet the country`s pledge to cut its gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020.
"Indonesia has successfully reduced the number of forest fires over the past three years, and this year, the government is determined to do a similar thing as the National Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) has predicted a prolonged drought since May," the forestry ministry`s Forestry Protection and Nature Conservation Director General (PHKA) Darori said here on Wednesday (Sept 7).
The government has anticipated forest fires by among other things allocating funds amounting to about Rp160 billion to tackle forest fires in ten provinces.
Darori said earlier that the number of hot spots in Indonesia since the January 2011 were 8,082.
"The hot spots in Indonesia are found in six provinces which are prone to forest fires, and the highest is recorded in Riau with 2,159 hot spots, West Kalimantan 809, North Sumatra 600 and Central Kalimantan 543, Jambi 455, and South Kalimantan 259 hot spot," Darori said.
Around 77 percent of forest fires in Indonesia have occurred in plantation and agricultural areas, and only 23 percent in forest area, as fire has been considered the cheapest, fastest, and most effective a land clearing method.
In general, fires in peat land area were set intentionally. "The fires are due to illegal logging, plantations, and land clearing for agriculture purposes," he said.
Darori stated that the forestry ministry is ready to deal with forest fires currently occurring on Sumatra and Kalimantan Islands.
The government has emphasized preventive measures by urging the community not to use fire as land clearing methods, according to the director general.
The coordination with the regional administration authorities has also been intensified because most of the fires are located outside forest area under the responsibility of the regional administrations, Darori said, adding that he regretted, however, that the funds allocated by the regional governments for forest fire handling were too small.
As the number of forest fire hot spots is increasing in this current dry season, the central government has decided to deploy personnel to help put out the fires.
Forest Fire Operation Teams were sent to three provinces - South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and Riau, from Jakarta on Thursday.
"The forest fire operation team will be working for three months," Coordinating Minister for People`s Welfare Agung Laksono said when seeing off the departure of the teams at Halim Perdanakusuma airport, eastern Jakarta.
Forest fire hot spots in swamp and peat land areas are particularly rampant in Jambi, South Sumatra, and Riau Provinces known as the triangle of forest fires in Indonesia.
"In Jambi, the forest fires hit Muaro District, and three peat land spots at the Berbak National Park conservation area," Darori said, adding that a human-induced fire razed around 8,000 hectares of Kerinci Seblat National Park in Jambi Province.
The Jambi fire has entered the first level status of alert because it has spread from around 500 ha last week to more than 1,000 ha currently.
The fire hot spots were detected in 12 peatland locations, including three inside the Berbak National Park in Tanjung Jabung Timur District, and one inside protected peat forest area in Tanjung Jabung Barat District.
The forest fires have been going on since two months ago in Jambi and South Sumatra.
The transitional condition from dry season to rainy season has triggered the hot spots in Riau as the temperature was quite high, according to Yudhistira Mawaddah, an analyst of the Riau Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) .
On Tuesday (Sept 6) alone, the US NOAA (the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellite detected a total of 73 hot spots on Sumatra Island, including 20 hot spots in Riau Province.
The number significantly increased from only three hot spots in Riau on the previous day (Monday, Sept 5), Yudhistira said in Pekanbaru on Thursday (Sept 8).
In addition to the 20 in Riau Province, there were also 12 hot spots in Jambi Province, two in Aceh Province, three in West Sumatra Province, three in Lampung Province, and one each in North Sumatra and Bengkulu Provinces, he said.
And the highest number of hot spots was found in South Sumatra, namely 31 hot spots.
In Central Kalimantan Province, 40 forest fire hot spots were detected in Kotawaringin Timur District, by Terra and AQUA satellites between August 30 and September 6, 2011.
"The 40 hot spots indicate forest and plantation fires," Ian Septiawan, the head of the Region II Conservation Section of the Regional Nature Conservation Agency (BKSDA) said in Kotawaringin Timur on Wednesday (Sept 7).
The number of hot spots, however, had decreased lately due to rainfall. Previously, the Terra and AQUA had detected 188 hot spots during the August 19-26 period in Kotawaringin Timur, he said.
Most of the hot spots were detected in large oil palm plantations and not easily put out despite rainfall, he explained.
"The regional and provincial governments in Central Kalimantan have so far blamed local people for the forest fires. In fact, the main perpetrators of forest fires are large oil palm plantations which have so far escaped legal sanctions," he said.
During the current dry season, hot spots have been detected in six provinces prone to forest fires, namely Riau, West Kalimantan, North Sumatra, Central Kalimantan, Jambi, and South Kalimantan.
The latest fires are currently razing on the slope of Mount Sumbing in Central Java Province, and at Panaikan village in South Sulawesi.
Forest fires caused by plantations and traditional farming methods have been blamed for the choking haze which shrouds the region annually during the dry season.
Given the increasing number of fire hot spots in the country, Rofi Munawar, a member of the House of Representatives (DPR RI)`s Commission IV, has urged the government to tackle the fires seriously.
The government must be on alert to prevent business-driven forest fires and must not work half-heartedly, Rofi, a member of the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) said in Jakarta on Thursday.
It was possible that the commercial fires had been started intentionally to clear land for plantation or mining businesses, he said.
"The forestry ministry must act fast to anticipate more hot spots and to prevent the fires from spreading out of control," Rofi said.
As most of the fires were human induced, the government must intensify environmental campaigns, empower local people and improve the economic condition of people living surrounding forest area, the legislator urged.
"The worst disaster where the number of hot spots reaching up to 146,264 in 2006, must not be repeated," he said.
Indonesia`s forest area reaches over 130 million hectares, the world`s third largest after Brazil and Congo. In 1982-83 and 1994, El Nino-induced forest fires had destroyed around 6.4 million hectares of forest, especially in East Kalimantan. (*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli
NOAA satellite detects 20 hot spots in Riau
Antara 9 Sep 11;
Pekanbaru, Riau (ANTARA News) - The US NOAA ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellite detected 20 hot spots in Riau Province, Sumatra Island, on Tuesday (Sept 6), an official said.
The number significantly increased from only three hot spots on the previous day (Monday, Sept 5), Yudhistira Mawaddah, an analyst of the Riau Meteorological, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) said here on Thursday.
"The 20 hot spots spread in four districts, namely Pelalawan District with 10 hot spots, in Kuantansingingi two hot spots, and in Indragiri Hulu as well as Indragiri Hilir with four hot spots respectively,," he said.
On Sumatra Island, there were a total of 73 hot spots on Tuesday.
In addition to the 20 in Riau Province, there were also 12 hot spots in Jambi Province, two in Aceh Province, three in West Sumatra Province, three in Lampung Province, and one each in North Sumatra and Bengkulu Provinces, he said.
"Meanwhile, the most hot spots were found in South Sumatra, namely 31 hot spots," he said.
He explained the transitional condition from dry season to rainy season has triggered the hot spots in Riau as the temperature was quite high. (*)
SYS/F001/H-AJM
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Forestry ministry ready to deal with forest fires
Antara 9 Sep 11;
Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The forestry ministry is ready to deal with forest fires currently occurring on Sumatra and Kalimantan Islands, according to an official.
Forestry Protection and Nature Conservation Director General of the Forestry Ministry (PHKA) Darori said here on Wednesday that he had received reports on forest fire hot spots in Jambi, South Sumatra, and Riau Provinces known as the triangle of forest fires in Indonesia, especially in swamp and peat land areas.
"In Jambi, the forest fires hit Muaro District, and three peat land spots at the Berbak National Park conservation area," Darori said after attending the Sumatran Governors` Economic Forum at Manggala Wanabakti building in central Jakarta.
In South Sumatra, hot spots were detected in Musi Banyuasin District.
Besides Sumatra, the forestry ministry has also received reports on forest and plantation fires in West and Central Kalimantan Provinces. "But, the number is small," he said.
In general, fires in peat land area were set intentionally. "The fires are due to illegal logging, plantations, and land clearing for agriculture," he said.
The fire that razed around 8,000 hectares of Kerinci Seblat National Park in Jambi Province, was also human induced.
The government has emphasized preventive measures by urging the community not to use fire as land clearing methods.(*)
F001/H-AJM
Editor: Jafar M Sidik
Sudden trash build up at East Coast? ICCS swings into action!
from wild shores of singapore
Outward Bound Singapore’s first ICCS cleanup – report on Stomp’s Youthphoria
from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore
Nesting of the Black-naped Oriole: 2. Feeding chicks
from Bird Ecology Study Group
The William Farquhar collection of rare watercolours have finally found a permanent home
deepika shetty Straits Times 9 Sep 11;
The 477 rare and exquisite watercolour drawings of South-east Asian plants and animals that make up the William Farquhar collection have done some travelling in their 200 years.
They have gone from Malacca, where they were commissioned, to Britain, and more recently, popped up at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1993, which led to a full circuit back home to South-east Asia, and Singapore.
The journey home began thanks to cultural philanthropist Goh Geok Khim, the 80-year-old founder of local brokerage firm GK Goh, who bought the William Farquhar collection of natural history drawings for $3 million in 1993.
But the full story of the journey of the collection - which can be seen in a new light at the National Museum from next week - has only just emerged.
For two years, they stayed with the auction house as Mr Goh did not know how to store them.
When he finally did bring them to Singapore to donate to the National Museum, it was in remarkable style.
Mr Goh hand-carried the collection on a Singapore Airlines flight from London.
His only condition for his generous donation was to have a permanent space for the watercolours of animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and plants, which were commissioned by Farquhar - the first British Resident and Commandant of Singapore from 1819 to 1823 - when he was based in Malacca.
The drawings were exhibited here in 2007 in a show called The Empire Of Nature, but now Mr Goh's wish is finally being fulfilled on Tuesday with the National Museum's re-opening of The Goh Seng Choo Gallery. It is named after his father, who was interested in nature, especially botany.
The 76 sq m gallery on the second floor of the museum will feature a rotating selection of about 70 works at any one time, in keeping with conservation guidelines.
The collection almost did not make it to Singapore, reveals a chatty Mr Goh in an interview at his 33rd floor office in the Singapore Land Tower.
Someone else had out-bid him in the first round, but for the collection to leave the UK, it needed the approval of the Royal Heritage Board.
In the time it took to get the clearance, the successful bidder lost interest and it was offered to MrGoh. He recalls that it was on the insistence of his art- and heritage-savvy son, Yew Lin, that he became interested in the collection in the first place.
'When my son told me about this collection, my question was: Why do I want to buy this? To which he responded, you can buy it, keep it and make a lot of money on it someday or give it all away,' he says.
It is worth $11 million today, but Mr Goh clearly has no regrets about donating it to the museum when he explains why he purchased the entire collection: 'I was reluctant to see the collection broken up and sold as separate drawings because the collection as a whole has much historical value.
'I made the decision to acquire the whole collection to keep it intact and make it available for future generations.'
On why he kept it at Sotheby's for two years, he says: 'I had not seen the entire collection but I knew I could not bring it back immediately due to the humidity here.'
That was a decision that was well worthwhile.
Museum director Lee Chor Lin says: 'We are highly aware that these early 19th-century watercolour paintings retained their brilliance because they had not been exposed to light for nearly two centuries before they became part of the National Museum collection in 1995.
'It is important, as the custodian of the collection, that we ensure the longevity of these works and their quality will outlast us for centuries to come, for the greater good of future Singapore. To do this, we must calibrate the exhibiting schedule carefully so as not to overexpose them to light and temperature unnecessarily.'
The show's curator, Mr Daniel Tham, estimates that each work which goes on display needs to be 'rested' for a few years before being displayed again.
On the significance of this collection, museum director Lee says: 'As we do not have a comparable set of paintings specifically about Singapore's flora and fauna, Farquhar's collection will be the nearest evidence of Singapore's natural habitat around 1819.'
Pre-dating the era of photography, the detailed watercolours offer a rare look at the rich bio-diversity of the Malayan Peninsula in the 19th century.
To do justice to the meticulously documented works, Mr Tham has presented the first exhibit through four main sections. These show Farquhar's fascination with natural history.
Says Mr Tham, 30: 'The works document Farquhar's exploratory journeys in search of new discoveries, the animals and birds in his zoo, experimental gardening as well the artists' struggles to accommodate Farquhar's demands for scientific realism in natural history artworks.'
Says Ms Yvonne Choo, a public relations professional in her 40s: 'When the collection was first exhibited in the 1990s, I visited it frequently and enjoyed examining the details of the flora and fauna of our part of the world depicted by different artists.
'I am glad it is returning as a permanent exhibition as I remember it as a must-see, unique collection. It also made me appreciate all those unknown and unnamed commissioned artists who created these fascinating works.'
200-year-old treasure
The William Farquhar collection of natural history drawings comprises 477 watercolour drawings of animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects and flora and fauna.
Rendered by Chinese, Indian and Malay artists, the paintings were commissioned by Singapore's First Resident and Commandant, Major-General William Farquhar, when he was based in Malacca.
Farquhar was with Sir Stamford Raffles when he founded Singapore in 1819. He was left to manage the colony for four years after Raffles left. He died in Perth, Scotland, in 1839 at the age of 65.
The collection was acquired for $3 million by Mr Goh Geok Khim, the 80-year-old founder of brokerage firm GK Goh, at a Sotheby's auction in London and donated to the museum in 1995.
The 200-year-old collection is now worth at least $11 million. It has great historical importance. The only other similar collection, which belonged to Raffles, was destroyed in a ship fire when the founder of Singapore returned to England in 1824.
Where: The Goh Seng Choo Gallery, Level 2, National Museum, 93 Stamford Road
When: Opens next Tuesday, 10am to 8pm daily
Admission: Free
Info: Call 6332-3659/5642 or go to www.nationalmuseum.sg
Farquhar feted at last
Cheah Ui-Hoon Business Times 16 Sep 11;
HE spent four years in Singapore, with the monumental task of laying out the foundations of a new British settlement. In contrast, his superior who signed the deal which obtained the island from Johor, was in Singapore for only a few months.
As founder, Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles's name lives on in abounding posterity here though, while Singapore's First Resident William Farquhar only got a street named after him, and that too was wiped off Singapore's map years ago because of development.
The ill-remembered Farquhar finally gets some due acknowledgement in a petite-sized gallery at the National Museum which will showcase - not his achievements in Singapore's early administration - but in Natural History. This is thanks to the donation to the museum by local brokerage firm owner Goh Geok Khim, who had purchased the collection from the Royal Asiatic Society in 1993.
The William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings is a tangible record of his interest in the topic dating back to the time he was Resident of Malacca. It was Farquhar who mentored Raffles in natural history studies and 'its documentation through art', according to a British Library publication on Raffles'own Natural History drawing collection.
For this first unveiling of the collection, 72 drawings have been put up in low light and the works will be rotated every year, drawn from the 477 drawings in Farquhar's collection. For the first exhibition, curator Daniel Tham picked drawings and grouped them under four sections to show the context of the 19th-century colonial mindset at the time.
In the first, the Spirit of Exploration records Farquhar's journeys to make new botanical discoveries. The wild nutmeg (gymacranthera farquhariana) is the only species today named after Farquhar. Under Experimental Gardening, drawings of the nutmeg, pepper, gambier and durian reflect Farquhar's enthusiasm for valuable crops - as under his supervision, cloves and nutmeg were planted at the foot of Government Hill, or Fort Canning.
In Art and Science of Natural History: Artistic Influence, the selection highlights the style of unnamed Chinese artists whom Farquhar commissioned, such as the blue wash behind white objects, to accentuate the outline. Drawings of birds are also the most lifelike, owing possibly to the artist's background in traditional Chinese art.
Farquhar's zoological contributions are showcased in the centre of the gallery, reflecting how zoology was his foremost interest. Farquhar was involved in the discovery and identification of several indigenous species, such as the Malayan tapir (above). He had not only submitted a description to the Asiatic Society of Bengal but raised one as a pet, but in the race to be published, Farquhar lost out to a French zoologist. Not that he was unduly concerned, notes Mr Tham.
For those who can't wait to see the whole collection- seeing that it will take a while for the drawings to be rotated, the museum has a publication containing Farquhar's entire collection published last year, entitled Natural History Drawings: The Complete William Farquhar Collection. It is available at major bookstores and the museum's shop. There is also an older catalogue self-published by GK Goh, in a limited-edition run,also available at the Museum Shop.
The National Museum's Goh Seng Choo Gallery (the former Balcony space on the upper Rotunda) and sixth permanent gallery is open daily from 10am to 8pm and admission is free. The museum is located at 93 Stamford Road, its website is www.nationalmuseum.sg
Feng Zengkun Straits Times 9 Sep 11;
HOUSEWIFE Jenny Lam, 42, grows a plant called the seven-star needle in the garden of her condominium apartment, and eats a few leaves from it every week in the firm belief that it wards off diabetes and cancer.
'Sometimes I also give it to my dog when he's sick, and he gets better,' she said.
A researcher from the National University of Singapore (NUS) wants to interview at least 100 people like her, who grow or buy medicinal herbs for their own consumption.
Associate Professor Koh Hwee Ling, of NUS' Department of Pharmacy, says the medical effects of common herbs here have not been properly documented, and she wants to create a database of their benefits and side effects in a pioneering project.
From the interviews, Dr Koh and her team hope to produce a guide for homeowners who want to grow their own herbs.
Some plants may also be selected for experiments.
Already, about 80 people have stepped forward in the past year, with information on some 60 species of plants in all.
The most commonly used ones are aloe vera, ginger and bittergourd, believed to fight off hypertension, acne and flu.
More exotic remedies include chewing the bitter seeds from the fruit of mahogany trees, which is believed to prevent cancer. The trees are found along the east coast and in older estates such as Yio Chu Kang.
But Dr Koh hopes to carry out still more interviews to make the database comprehensive.
In particular, she and her team hope cancer patients and survivors will step forward with their remedies.
She said: 'These patients are more likely to try different ways to help themselves, and their experience would be invaluable.'
Anyone who has used freshly grown medicinal herbs in the last five years may volunteer to be part of this project. They will be interviewed in person and be required to supply a sample of the plants they use.
They are also encouraged to share their medical records.
Dr Koh says the information will be kept confidential and volunteers can choose to withdraw from the study at any time.
The project is expected to end in 2013, but the team aims to complete all interviews by next September.
Volunteers can e-mail nus.medplant@gmail.com or call 6516-3120 and ask to speak to Dr Koh.
Posts
visitors since Nov 07