Join us for “The Last Hurrah!”
from Raffles Museum News and Habitatnews
Ship collision off Sisters Island on 2 Mar 2013: no oil spilled from wild shores of singapore
NSS Kids’ Fun with Forest Butterflies
from Fun with Nature by Fun with Nature - NSS Kids Blog
Gearing up for climate change
Straits Times 6 Mar 13;
Warming seas’ effect on trade
WASHINGTON - The quickest way to get goods from Asia to the United States' East Coast in 2050 might well be straight across the Arctic, where a warming climate is expected to open new sea routes through what is now impenetrable ice.
Most shipping traffic between these two centres now goes through the Suez or Panama canals, and that is likely to continue even as melting Arctic sea ice makes the far north more accessible, according to a new study out on Monday.
But increasingly warm temperatures also could make the North-west Passage, north of Canada, an economically viable shipping route.
Now, it is passable only at the end of most summers.
Warmer temperatures could also open up a highly seasonal route directly over the North Pole by mid-century, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus.
The across-the-pole route, which had never before been considered, would be available only to light ice-breakers capable of ploughing through ice 1.2m thick.
The Northern Sea Route, which mostly hugs Russia's northern coastline and is now a primary Arctic shipping route, would continue to be viable, according to geography professor Laurence Smith at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Last September, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre said that Arctic sea ice had melted to its lowest recorded level.
The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on Earth because of the so-called albeido effect, where sun-reflecting light-coloured ice is frequently replaced by sun-absorbing dark-coloured water. The more ice melts, the warmer things get.
Melting ice could make these Arctic routes more viable, Dr Smith said.
Using projections of global warming and Arctic ice loss, he said that by 2050, the North-west Passage will be sufficiently navigable to make the trip from the North American east coast to the Bering Strait in 15 days, compared to 23 days for the Northern Sea Route - about a 30 per cent reduction in the time taken.
This is never likely to be a year-round proposition since winter sea ice will always recur, Dr Smith added.
A large Russian tanker, the Ob River, capable of carrying 150,000 cubic metres of gas, made a pioneering voyage in November and December last year across the Northern Sea Route, becoming the first ship of its kind to sail across the Arctic.
"The round trip of the vessel from Asia to Europe and back has confirmed the technical and commercial viability of the Northern Sea Route for the global liquefied natural gas business," the Russian energy giant Gazprom said in a press release.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, observed in a post on his Facebook page last November that it was hard to predict how the Ob River's voyage would affect ports like Singapore in the long term.
However, Singapore should not be too badly affected by the new Arctic shipping routes, said Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide during a visit to the city-state last November.
Container ships carrying goods that need to arrive at a specific time will still take the traditional route through Egypt's Suez Canal, which is more reliable and brings trade closer to Singapore, said Mr Eide.
And he suggested that Singapore can benefit by using its shipping expertise to develop ports along the Northern Sea Route.
REUTERS
UK: Prepare for floods, drought
LONDON - Britain should do more to prepare for climate change after extreme weather last year brought both drought and floods, according to the Environment Agency.
The United Kingdom had floods in one out of every five days last year while one in four days was in drought, the agency said in an online report.
Some rivers went from their lowest levels to their highest on record within a four-month period. England had record rain last year and 7,950 properties flooded across the country. Yet the United Kingdom can expect "severe, short-term drought" every 10 years, the agency said.
Part of the flooding problem is due to previous policies, said the BBC. For decades, farmers were paid to drain boggy land to improve it for grazing. This caused water to rush off the fields into rivers, whereas previously it would have been held in the bogs, flowing into the rivers throughout the year. In addition, many flood plains have been built on.
Agency chairman Chris Smith said that England needs to learn how to save water when it is raining and disperse it from populated areas when it floods, according to London's Daily Telegraph.
This means cutting red tape to encourage landowners to build small-scale water storage reservoirs on farms, golf clubs, sports stadiums and racecourses to survive dry spells.
At the same time, water companies must be encouraged to take water from rivers only when levels are high and to store the reserves in reservoirs.
Planners must be nudged to build green spaces and ditches to store water in towns and cities and stop it from building up in roads. Homes can help by fitting water meters and saving water.
BLOOMBERG
More extreme Aussie weather
SYDNEY - Climate change was a major driving force behind extreme weather events that alternately scorched and soaked large sections of Australia in recent months, according to a report just issued by the country's Climate Commission.
A four-month heatwave during the Australian summer culminated in January in bush fires that tore through the eastern and south-eastern coasts of the country.
Torrential rains and flooding followed in the more densely populated states of New South Wales and Queensland, leaving at least six people dead and causing roughly US$2.43 billion (S$3 billion) in damage.
Scientists have long been hesitant to link individual weather events directly to climate change. Australian scientists in particular have been cautious about linking the two, partly because of the country's naturally occurring cycles of drought and floods, which are already extreme compared with much of the rest of the world.
But the Climate Commission report argues that the frequency and ferocity of recent extreme weather events indicate an acceleration that is unlikely to abate unless serious steps are taken to prevent further changes to the planet's environment.
"I think one of the best ways of thinking about it is imagining the baseline has shifted," commission leader Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. At least 123 weather records fell during the 90-day period examined, including milestones such as the hottest summer on record.
NEW YORK TIMES
Obama picks EPA, energy chiefs
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has named Ms Gina McCarthy, an experienced clean air regulator, to take charge at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Professor Ernest Moniz, a physicist and strong advocate for natural gas and nuclear power as cleaner alternatives to coal, to run the Department of Energy.
But Mr Obama still must confront refashioning the American way of producing and consuming energy, hurdles that stymied climate and energy policy in his first term.
Mr Obama has embraced unconventional natural gas production, which has brought lower energy prices and reduced emissions as utilities switch from coal to natural gas to produce electricity.
But hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, presents difficult environmental issues, including the possibility of groundwater contamination and the unregulated release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Mr Obama has also pursued offshore drilling for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Ocean, despite environmental risks.
And the administration appears inclined to approve a pipeline to carry heavy crude oil from tar sand formations in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Texas. But a State Department environmental impact report notes that extracting, shipping and refining the Canadian oil would produce more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of oil.
NEW YORK TIMES
The threat of extinction is growing for African forest elephants, according to a study released at the Cites summit in Bangkok
Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk 5 Mar 13;
The forest elephants of Africa have lost almost two-thirds of their number in the past decade due to poaching for ivory, a landmark new study revealed on Tuesday. The research was released at an international wildlife summit in Bangkok where the eight key ivory-trading nations, including the host nation Thailand and biggest market China, have been put on notice of sweeping trade sanctions if they fail to crack down on the trade.
"The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant," said Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of 60 scientists on the research team.
There are about 100,000 forest elephants remaining in the forests of central Africa, compared with about 400,000 of the slightly larger savannah elephants. The total elephant population was over 1 million 30 years ago, but has been devastated by poaching driven by the rising demand for ivory ornaments in Asia.
Prof Lee White, head of the National Parks Service in Gabon, once home to the largest forest elephant population, said: "A rainforest without elephants is a barren place. They bring it to life, they create the trails and keep open the forest clearings other animals use; they disperse the seeds of many of the rainforest trees – elephants are forest gardeners at a vast scale."
Forest elephants have suffered particularly badly because they range across central Africa, which has been left lawless in large areas by war, and where poachers have ready access to guns. Furthermore, the tusks of forest elephants are longer, straighter and harder than savannah elephants, making them particularly sought after. "A lot of carvers prefer forest elephant tusks," said WCS's vice president, Elizabeth Bennett.
Although deforestation is taking place, loss of habitat is not the principal problem for the elephants, according to another of the scientific team, John Hart of the Lukuru Foundation. "Historically, elephants ranged right across the forests of this vast region of over 2m sq km, but they now cower in just a quarter of that area. Although the forest cover remains, it is empty of elephants, demonstrating that this is not a habitat degradation issue. This is almost entirely due to poaching."
The new study, published in the journal Plos One, took nine years to complete and the team spent over 90,000 person-days in the field, walking over 13,000 km and taking 11,000 samples. They found the population fell by 62% between 2002 and 2011 and was now less than 10% of its potential size.
Last month, Gabon announced the death of about 11,000 forest elephants in the Minkébé national park between 2004 and 2012. Gabon's president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, says: "Our elephants are under siege because of an illegal international market that has driven ivory prices in the region up significantly. I call upon the international community to join us in this fight. If we do not reverse the tide fast the African elephant will be exterminated."
The 178-nation summit of the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) began in Bangkok on Monday and has already seen the eight countries identified as key to the ivory trade threatened with trade sanctions if they do not tackle failures in protection against poaching in Africa and failures in seizing illegal ivory along trade routes to China. The nations, including the states which most ivory passes through – Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malaysia, Philippines and Vietnam – and where most ivory is bought – China and Thailand - must come up with concrete action plans or face a ban on millions of dollars of trade in animals and plants, including crocodile skins and orchids.
The Thai prime minister opened the Cites summit by pledging to outlaw Thailand's domestic ivory trade which is currently legal. But she was criticised for failing to set a deadline.
Proposals to the Cites summit supporting and opposing more "one-off" sales of ivory will not succeed, the Guardian has been told. A previous "one-off" sale in 2008 was criticised by some as driving up demand, but defended by others as providing funds for elephant protection.
Cutting the demand for ivory, as well as fighting poaching, is seen as crucial, with African elephant deaths running at 25,000 a year. Bennett said better education programmes in China would be a vital part of the action plans: "A lot of people don't actually know that you have to kill elephants to get ivory."
Latest Green Jobs in Singapore [25 Feb - 3 Mar 2013]
from Green Business Times
Triple Tours March 10!
from a.t.Bukit Brown. Heritage. Habitat. History.
Biodiversity for kids during the March school holidays
from Celebrating Singapore's BioDiversity!
SP/Marsel Rombe Saan Jakarta Globe 4 Mar 13;
Indonesians should prepare for an early onset of the dry season and start conserving water, a Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) official said on Monday.
Head of BMKG Mulyono Prabowo said that the dry season would not arrive at the same time in every area in the country, but it would come more quickly this year than in previous years.
“With this type of rainfall, Java will soon enter the dry season,” he said on Monday.
Prabowo said Indonesia should implement water management, especially for the agriculture sector. He urged farmers to anticipate a limited water supply and city dwellers to start preserving the limited resource.
Previously the agency predicted the dry season would arrive in Indonesia in April, however some areas started to experience the dry season as early as February. The dry season is expected to hit many more locales this month.
National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said even though the dry season would come early this year, it did not pose serious danger.
“To welcome the early dry season, BNPB has arranged a contingency plan to anticipate forest fires. We have updated all the high risk areas and coordinated the plan with the other institutions,” he said, adding than BNPB has allocated Rp 250 billion ($25.8 million) for potential disasters.
Last year, nine of the 10 districts and cities across West Nusa Tenggara suffered an inordinately harsh dry season that extended from March through November and forced residents in some areas to travel several kilometers a day just to fetch water.
Also in 2012, the unusually intense dry season affected the production of rice in Klaten, a key rice-producing district in Central Java.
Djoko Sarjono, head of the Klaten chapter of the Indonesian Farmers Association (HKTI), said last October that besides not being able to reach the surplus rice production target of 125 million tons, the existing production was lacking in quality due to low water supplies.
The drought reduced the volume of water in rivers, lakes, wells and reservoirs in 2012. The water shortages dried irrigation channels that are used to hydrate more than 127,000 hectares of paddy fields, turning the farmland into parched tracts and causing thousands of farmers to suffer financial losses.
Forest fires also raged across Kalimantan, Java and other areas of Indonesia in 2012.
The grisly trade in wild animals is underpinned by slaughter, smuggling and money-laundering. It's time to get serious
John E Scanlon, secretary-general of CITES guardian.co.uk 1 Mar 13;
Illegal trade in wildlife has now reached a scale that poses an immediate risk to wildlife and to people. Over the past five years, we have seen a dramatic spike in the poaching and illegal trade in elephants and rhinos. In 2011 an estimated 25,000 elephants were poached across Africa and in South Africa alone 668 rhinos were lost to poachers in 2012.
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was born 40 years ago on 3 March, 1973 in Washington DC. It sets the global controls for trade in wildlife, and the 177 countries that have joined CITES will meet from Monday in Bangkok, Thailand to take stock of of the situation, step up enforcement efforts and send clear political signals on putting a stop to illegal wildlife trade.
Today's wildlife crime increasing involves organised crime syndicates, and in some cases rebel militia. These criminals operate across national borders and through international shipment routes; have significant financial support; understand and utilise new technologies, and are often well-armed. They do not hesitate to use violence or threats of violence against those who try to stand in their way, and constantly adapt their tactics to avoid detection and prosecution.
In doing so, they exploit people in some of the poorest countries of the world, corrupt officials and kill and injure wildlife officers.
This poses a serious threat to the stability and economy of these countries, robs them of their natural resources and cultural heritage, and undermines good governance and the rule of law. These criminals are laundering their ill-gotten gains and in some instances, use them to finance armed conflicts and other criminal activities, with the UN Security Council recently linking the Lord's Resistance Army to the illicit trade in ivory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They must be stopped.
Wildlife crime can be attractive to criminal gangs due to the lower risk of detection and prosecution, and it often carries relatively low penalties. Wildlife officers serving in the frontline are being outgunned and they need support from police, and sometimes the military, as well as the international community.
It is time to treat wildlife crime as serious crime and to deploy the techniques used to combat illicit trade in narcotics, such as undercover operations and "controlled deliveries" – meaning contraband is not seized but tracked to its destination.
This will enable the masterminds in this illegal trade to be identified, prosecuted and convicted. Bringing this destructive activity to an end will require harsh penalties, including making sure these criminals do not profit from their crimes. These enforcement measures need to be coupled with well-targeted public awareness campaigns to help suppress demand for illegal goods.
While the challenges we face today are real and serious they should not overshadow our conservation successes through ensuring legal, sustainable and traceable trade in some species - such as with the African cherry, the Latin American vicuna, crocodiles and the Queen conch, where their survival in the wild was assured when their bark, wool, skins and meat, respectively, became legally and sustainably managed, with tangible benefits for local communities.
The recovery of the African elephant and the rhino over recent decades - and in particular the white rhino, has also been a great conservation success. White rhino population numbers in Africa have risen from about 2,000 in 1973 to over 19,000 in 2012, with South Africa having conserved more than 90% of this total. But these successes are now under grave threat, which serves to demonstrate that we cannot take anything for granted.
With a combination of conservation measures, strong enforcement, public awareness and adequate resources we can reverse the current alarming trends. This is why CITES is working with Interpol, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, the World Bank and the World Customs Organisation to support source, transit and destination countries in combatting this serious crime.
We know the way, now we need the collective will. The CITES World Wildlife Conference opening next week in Bangkok is when we must come together to turn the tables on wildlife crime.
Common palm civet seen at UTown NUS
from Life of a common palm civet in Singapore
Sighted!
from a.t.Bukit Brown. Heritage. Habitat. History.
Final call for area affected by 8 lane highway in Bukit Brown
from Rojak Librarian
PUB drinking water quality report 2011
from Water Quality in Singapore
Why we do it
from Gamefish And Aquatic Rehabiliation Society
Last chance to see the Raffles Museum Public Gallery!
from wild shores of singapore
Blacktip Reef Shark
from Monday Morgue
By Geh Min For The Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
THE heated debate over the Population White Paper arose partly from unease over a future projected population of 6.9 million.
But a more important underlying issue needs to be aired too: What is Singapore to its citizens, including its leaders? Is it home, hotel or a corporation like an economic entity?
Without a shared sense of home, we will not achieve social cohesion in our compact city-state.
It will then not matter whether we have five, six or seven million people. Life will be stressful and even intolerable.
Our founding fathers had a vision to link people and place - Home Ownership for Everyone.
But have we expanded this sense of ownership beyond our own doorsteps? We have some way still to go, given the recurrent apathy and anti-social behaviour such as littering.
Increasing signs of the Not In My Backyard (Nimby) syndrome and road rage imply the expanded sense of ownership is selfishly rather than socially motivated.
Still, more educated and articulate Singaporeans with a strong sense of national identity are speaking up. They want to make a difference and can be frustrated by the lack of avenues for doing so.
The debates over Chek Jawa, the Railway Corridor and Bukit Brown exemplify this trend, and should be viewed positively, as a sign of growing nationhood.
Social and spatial justice
IN A country as land-scarce as ours, spatial justice is as important as social justice in creating a level playing field in jobs and educational opportunities.
The Government's public housing policy, for example, strives for spatial justice. The People's Action Party's early policy of acquiring land at low rates to be redeveloped for low-cost housing put vast tracts of land - and housing units - within reach of the masses, serving spatial justice.
Beyond housing is a need to equitably allocate land for transport and other essential amenities for industry and investment, and for nature and recreation. Maintaining a good balance is challenging.
In Singapore, the state is by far the biggest land owner, thanks to the Land Acquisition Act, which gives the state wide powers of acquisition. The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is both the arbiter and implementer of land use: the trustee that acts for the people.
How should the URA determine use of land?
Property and environmental lawyer Joseph Chun argues that the concept of the Public Trust Doctrine might be useful here. He said: "When applied to the state, it draws a distinction between ordinary land generally owned by the state as a corporate entity as though it were a private landowner; and public trust land held by the state as the sovereign as though it were a trustee for specific purposes in the common interest of the public."
This distinction - the state as corporate landowner and as trustee landowner - is crucial. To be fair to the Government, it has indeed been a wise steward in maintaining this difficult balance. Environmentalists such as myself will argue that one failure is the disproportionate number of private golf courses allowed here - they consume huge land tracts when only a small minority benefit.
But can a future government continue to be a wise steward for our increasingly scarce land? There is no systematic use of environmental impact assessments (EIAs) to measure the impact of any development plan. Nor is there requisite information about what most Singaporeans want when it comes to land use.
Particularly worrying is the proposal in the White Paper to build infrastructure and amenities well in advance of a 6.9 million population. The notion of building "ahead of demand" might sound appealing to those jostling for space on crowded trains today.
But do we really need to set aside valuable land and taxpayers' money to provide for this hypothetical increase?
When land becomes scarcer and population density increases further, how will the state maintain the precarious balance between land use for the public good and private developments and amenities affordable only for the affluent? Even expanding our roads and highways could be a form of spatial injustice as cars are one of the least efficient and most inequitable forms of transport in a land-challenged country.
Consider, for example, the lack of proper housing amenities for foreign workers. These construction workers, cleaners and domestic workers contribute enormously to making Singapore "clean and green" and creating a "quality living environment". Yet, until recently, little thought seems to have been given to providing them with decent housing or recreational amenities.
A sense of continuity
WHEN physical landscapes change, something is lost irrevocably. A sense of continuity is essential to general well-being.
A rapidly changing society like Singapore needs to conserve as much of its natural and man-made heritage as possible, to preserve shared memories and to keep familiar landmarks.
For instance, the strong reactions over landmarks such as the Railway Line and Bukit Brown suggest that Singaporeans have a growing need for visible and palpable connections to a shared past.
A rapidly changing landscape might be a developer's dream and provide entertainment for transients and tourists, but it is a stressful nightmare for those who choose to make Singapore home.
Mr Chan Chun Sing, the Acting Minister for Social and Family Development, said recently that while "it is important to preserve Singapore's heritage, this has to be balanced against the need for redevelopment" as this "adds new buildings and new areas, which in turn allows future generations to create new memories".
He noted that since previous generations gave up some of their memories for us to be where we are today, "it is also incumbent on us to pay it forward".
But memories are not a commodity to be bartered or traded. The value of heritage is that subsequent generations can add fresh layers to treasured memories to enrich the narrative further - not trade old memories for new ones.
Heritage and national values cannot be transmitted by textbooks and political rhetoric alone. A society is defined as much by what we choose to preserve or destroy as by what we create.
A society that places no visible value on continuity will create future generations who are adrift on market forces rather than one anchored by a shared nationhood to country and fellow countrymen.
How will such a place produce people who are prepared to invest emotionally, to stay long term, to start a family and to make sacrifices to defend their country? It would be much easier to trade one country for another.
Singapore has evolved from a nation by chance to nationhood by choice. Let us not deteriorate into a city-state of convenience: a hotel rather than a home.
stopinion@sph.com.sg
The writer is a consultant ophthalmologist and immediate past president of the Nature Society.
Related links
Reclaiming the Public Trust in Singapore by Joseph Chun
Associate Member, Exco, Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=918737
Alvina Soh Channel NewsAsia 3 Mar 13;
SINGAPORE: Residents who have been illegally using state land at Clementi Avenue 4 for farming now have an official community farm.
The farm was launched on Sunday by Minister for Environment and Water Resources, Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, and Member of Parliament for Holland-Bukit Timah Group Representation Constituency, Sim Ann.
The farm comes after the Bukit Timah Citizens' Consultative Committee successfully applied for a three-year temporary occupation licence for the plot of state land.
It cost about S$60,000 to set up the farm.
For five years, laboratory manager Lester Yeong and his retiree father indulged their passion for gardening in their Clementi neighbourhood.
But their efforts were given the thumbs down as they were farming on state land.
Mr Yeong and other illegal farmers were asked by the authorities to clear out within two weeks in March last year, after some residents complained of smoke from the burning of leaves.
He said: "Looking at all the folks, it spurred me on to do something for everyone. I made the initiative to gather everyone, approach the RC for this community project to go on so that at least the folks from this area will be able to continue this hobby at their convenience."
The Bukit Timah Citizens' Consultative Committee then obtained an extension from the authorities on their behalf.
Ms Sim said: "The objective is to ensure that this is for wider community benefit. What's very important is that I think including the farmers, the opportunity to regularise what used to be unauthorised activities. We saw the opportunity for more people to come in and I think the farmers were very receptive of that."
Users of the community farm will pay an annual maintenance fee of S$60 for their individual plots.
Residents originally involved in unauthorised planting were invited to take up a plot each, while remaining plots were allocated through ballot to other interested residents.
Mr Yeong gets a 32-square metre plot to grow his produce.
He said: "The kids love it. There was one point of time, we were here every evening, from about 5pm to 7pm. They will just go around running, playing with water, catching insects, helping to weed. They enjoy this experience that they can't get in the classroom."
The land will be divided into 30 plots and fitted with amenities for gardening.
Farmers will also get water supply and a lighted footpath, leading from Blocks 301 and 305 Clementi Ave 4 to the community farm and the park connector parallel to the Ulu Pandan Canal.
Bukit Timah Citizens' Consultative Committee is also advising farmers against the burning of leaves and breeding of mosquito habitats.
- CNA/xq
Clementi state land now a community farm
Grassroots effort key in helping residents keep their once-illegal plots
Grace Chua Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
A PATCH of land in Clementi that was once used illegally by residents is now a community farm in which radishes, chillies, sweet potatoes and corn grow.
The farm, behind Block 305 Clementi Avenue 4 in the Bukit Timah division of Holland-Bukit Timah GRC, was officially opened by Environment and Water Resources Minister Vivian Balakrishnan and grassroots adviser Sim Ann yesterday.
Fruit and vegetables once thrived on the state land between Clementi Avenue 4 and Sungei Ulu Pandan, where labourers and retirees also gathered to chit-chat near a small shrine they had built. Other farmers had installed ponds and an outhouse.
But last March, other residents complained of burning leaves and mosquito breeding, which prompted the Singapore Land Authority to ask the farmers to go.
The Bukit Timah grassroots network stepped in to work with residents, farmers and government agencies.
They came up with a plan for the Bukit Timah citizens' consultative committee (CCC) to rent the land from the state on a yearly basis for community farming.
Today, users pay $5 a month to use the site's 30 plots, each 8m by 4m and allocated by ballot to existing and new farmers.
While some structures like the shrine and outhouse had to go, footpaths, lights, water points and a tool shed were added and work was done in late January.
The bill of about $60,000 was funded partly by the North West Community Development Council and partly by private donors.
Mr Michael Chia, vice-chairman of the CCC, said wet weather pushed back the completion date from late last year, and construction had to skirt an active gas pipe running underground.
The CCC also advises farm users on how to prevent mosquito breeding, and not to burn leaves.
Ms Sim, who is Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education as well as Communications and Information, said: "I would say it's a win-win outcome, and it was possible with a lot of legwork and persuasion on the part of the grassroots (organisations) and a lot of support from agencies."
Mr Lester Yeong, 35, whose family tended a plot at the old farm and has the use of a plot now, welcomes the cleaner environment. "With water available, we don't need to wait for rain," he said.
IT professional Toh Boon Chew, 42, who is a newcomer to the community farm, said: "I've gained some knowledge from the existing farmers."
Grace Chua Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
ALONG Tyersall Avenue, just off Holland Road, stands a set of spiked, forbidding-looking gates.
Inside, the paved path is buried under moss and just visible under a thick carpet of fallen leaves and fruit. The area is overgrown with trees such as tembusu, banana and albizia.
But in a few years' time, visitors to the Botanic Gardens will get to wander through this forest and a new marshland on an elevated walkway, perhaps even at night when the area comes alive with a chorus of creatures.
This 9.8ha patch, about as big as some 12 football fields and once part of the estate of the late Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor, will be the latest extension to the Botanic Gardens.
The forested area will bring the total size of the 154-year-old Botanic Gardens to nearly 74ha.
This year, work will begin on the long-delayed project, called the Tyersall extension. It was first announced in 2009, but in 2011, the completion date was extended from last year to this year. Now, work is slated to be done in 2015.
Singapore Botanic Gardens director Nigel Taylor said plans and specifications for a stormwater detention pond under a parking area for buses and cars at the Tyersall extension had to be finalised with PUB, the national water agency.
The century-old, regenerated forest of the Tyersall extension provides a rare chance to study forest regrowth, Dr Taylor added. "That's an interesting message: If you leave nature to get on with itself, in some cases, it can recover," said the botanist and former head curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London.
Within the forest patch are towering tembusu trees planted along the entry path to the Istana Tyersall, the Sultan's residence here which burned down in 1905.
It is likely that these, along with other plants and fungi, enabled the forest to regenerate, Dr Taylor said. A 6ha rainforest pocket at the main Botanic Gardens was also a likely source of fruit and seeds that were transported by birds.
Most of the biodiversity will be left undisturbed, he said. While invasive species like oil palm and some types of yam will have to be cleared, others like passion fruit, pili nuts and other medicinal herbs will stay.
Botanic Gardens staff even found a species of the rare Nipis Kulit tree, which was thought to have vanished from Singapore, in the forest.
The Tyersall extension will also feature a new freshwater swamp forest habitat. Elevated walkways will serve to protect both visitors and biodiversity.
Tyersall Avenue will also be realigned to skirt the edge of the extension. Dr Taylor did not disclose how much the project will cost since that will depend on tender results. Singapore Press Holdings is giving $1.2 million to develop outreach programmes.
"Man has so altered the environment that if you want a natural or semi-natural environment to prosper, you have to manage it," Dr Taylor said.
Botanic Gardens' Tyersall site dates back to 1854
Grace Chua Straits Times 4 Mar 13;
THE Singapore Botanic Gardens' Tyersall extension, which will feature tropical forest and marsh habitats, towering tembusu trees and an aerial walkway when it is completed, has a long history.
The 9.8ha is part of a larger 24.4ha swathe which was first occupied by lawyer and newspaper editor William Napier who, in 1854, built a house on it named Tyersall.
Later, the area became the estate of the Sultanate of Johor.
Sultan Abu Bakar built the Istana Tyersall, his Singapore residence, on it, as well as Woodneuk, a house which he gave to his wife Khadijah.
The Istana Tyersall was lost in a fire in 1905 and the land fell into disuse.
In 1990, the Government first announced plans to acquire a slice of the site. Today, the 9.8ha strip is under the Singapore Botanic Gardens' purview, while a larger plot to the west, bordering Holland Road, is private land.
The extension was first announced by then National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan in 2009, but its completion date was pushed back from 2012 to this year and now to 2015, as plans for a stormwater detention pond had to be worked out. Work will begin on the project later this year.
The new Botanic Gardens extension will do double duty as a visitor attraction and flood protection facility: Under its carpark for coaches and cars will sit a detention pond to protect the Stamford Canal catchment area from flooding during heavy storms.
The pond, with the capacity of some 15 Olympic-size pools, will hold excess stormwater temporarily to protect flood-prone areas.
When it rains, water from the catchment area will be channelled into the pond before it is released later into Marina Reservoir via Holland Road drains, a diversion canal and the Singapore River.
Finally, when the Tyersall extension takes shape, it will be part of a green network that extends north to the Central Catchment reserve and includes residents' gardens and community planting in Kheam Hock Road, and that will allow birds and butterflies to move in an ecological corridor.
Jakarta Globe 2 Mar 13;
A man in Jambi was attacked by a Sumatran tiger on Thursday, adding to a long list of human encounters with the endangered animal that has lost much of its habitat to encroachment and deforestation.
Sutrisno, 45, a resident of Muaro Sebo village, sustained serious wounds to his left thigh after being attacked at 2 p.m. on Thursday.
A witness, Dodi, said that Sutrisno was tapping for rubber in his field and noted that there were tiger footprints on the ground. Sutrisno later took a photograph of the footprints to alert his neighbors.
On his way back, he came face to face with the tiger.
Sutrisno went to reach for a wooden stick nearby but was attacked before he had could scare the tiger off.
The man tried to wrestle with the tiger before managing to climb a tree.
The tiger tried to chase after him but Sutrisno prevented it from climbing by hitting the animal repeatedly with the stick he was holding.
Several villagers immediately chased the tiger away after Sutrisno cried for help.
“The villagers in Muaro Sebo have now been told not to leave their houses,” Dodi said adding that there was another villager who claimed to have spotted at least three tigers not long before the incident.
The Jambi Natural Resource Conservation Agency (BKSDA) immediately deployed several officers to hunt down the tigers in a bid to relocate them away from human settlement.
The BKSDA has recorded several human encounters with the endangered species over the past three weeks, saying that a recent flood might have pushed the tiger population even closer to human habitation.
Last week, two farmers in West Tanjung Jabung district were attacked by tigers and had to be hospitalized. Just days later, a domesticated cow in Batanghari district was killed and eaten by tigers.
BKSDA Jambi chief Tri Siswo said the majority of the tiger population live inside the Kerinci Seblat National Park, which borders three provinces — Jambi, West Sumatra, and Bengkulu — and was heavily affected by recent floods.
Tri said that massive deforestation was also to blame for the increasing number of encounters with the endangered species, which is estimated to number only 30 to 40 in the entire province.
Reuters 3 Mar 13;
Thailand will end its domestic ivory trade, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra announced on Sunday, promising legislation that could help the country avoid international trade sanctions after criticism by environmental groups.
The announcement of legislation to end the ivory trade came at the opening ceremony of a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) conference in Bangkok.
"This will help protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa," Yingluck said in a statement.
The CITES conference runs until March 14.
Environmental groups such as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and TRAFFIC, which monitors the wildlife trade, have been calling for CITES to sanction Thailand, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo for their part in the illegal ivory trade.
Thailand is accused by conservation groups of fuelling the already rampant slaughter of African elephants and trade in their ivory through lax enforcement and regulation of its legal domestic market, which the country has never publicly committed to curbing before.
The largely unregulated market is ideal for laundering illegal African ivory into its system before being sold on, environmental groups say.
Groups said it was not clear how Thailand would go about ending its domestic trade, nor how long it would take.
"Prime Minister Shinawatra now needs to provide a timeline for this ban and ensure that it takes place as a matter of urgency, because the slaughter of elephants continues," said Carlos Drews, head of WWF's delegation to CITES.
Thailand is the largest illegal ivory market in the world behind China with much of the ivory being bought by foreign tourists, the WWF says.
(Reporting by Paul Carsten; Editing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Robert Birsel)
Thailand's promise to end ivory trade cautiously welcomed
Matt McGrath BBC News 3 Mar 13;
Thailand's prime minister says she will amend her country's laws to ban the legal trade in ivory.
Yingluck Shinawatra was speaking at the opening of the Cites conservation meeting taking place in Bangkok,
The legal market in Thailand is said to be fuelling high levels of poaching across Africa.
Critics say that there is a lack of clarity and detail regarding the proposed changes to the law.
There are about 6,500 elephants in Thailand, of which 2,500 live in the wild. Ivory taken from domesticated elephants can be legally sold in the country but campaign groups and scientific experts say that this law is being used to "launder" ivory taken illegally from Africa.
Thailand is believed to be second only to China as a market for tusks, often brutally removed from elephants across the continent. It is estimated that between 50 and 100 African elephants a day are being killed to meet the demand.
Speaking at the opening of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Bangkok, the Thai PM said that no one cares more about elephants than the people of Thailand.
But she acknowledged that the current system was being abused.
"Unfortunately, many have used Thailand as a transit country for the illegal international ivory trade," she told the meeting.
"As a next step we will forward amending the national legislation with the goal of putting an end on ivory trade and to be in line with international norms."
No further details were given as to the timing and scope of any ban. Some campaigners were delighted with the announcement, saying they understood the proposed changes would protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa.
Stuart Chapman from WWF told BBC News it was a "big occasion."
"We need to see detail in terms of the timeframe but it all starts with a commitment and we've never had that before, today the prime minister made that commitment," he said.
"This is a very important first step."
Others though were more cautious believing that Ms Yingluck was talking about curbing the international flow of ivory into Thailand by beefing up a DNA testing programme to validate the origins or tusks.
And with up to 5,000 stores, boutiques and kiosks selling ivory to tourists across Thailand, many believe it will be impossible to stem the trade, whatever the law says.
Philip Mansbridge is the chief executive of the wildlife charity, Care for the Wild. He told BBC news that the PM's intentions were unclear.
"While it is positive that the host country has recognised the size of the ivory issue and the importance of it, we were disappointed by the lack of a clear commitment to banning the domestic trade," he said.
"We don't feel it has gone far enough."
The Cites meeting runs until the 14th of March and will consider 70 proposals from governments to regulate the trade in species including polar bears, rhinos and several different varieties of sharks.
Thai prime minister announces end to ivory trade
WWF 3 Mar 13;
Bangkok, Thailand – Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra today pledged to end ivory trade in Thailand, seizing a key opportunity to stem global wildlife trafficking. Her statement came after the call of nearly 1.5 million WWF and Avaaz supporters.
Prime Minister Shinawatra said at the opening of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) in Bangkok that Thailand would take steps to end ivory trade – the first time the Thai government has said this publicly.
"As a next step we will forward amending the national legislation with the goal of putting an end on ivory trade and to be in line with international norms," Prime Minster Shinawatra said. "This will help protect all forms of elephants including Thailand's wild and domestic elephants and those from Africa."
Ending ivory trade in Thailand – currently the world's largest unregulated ivory market – will go a long way in stemming a global poaching crisis that is leading to the slaughter of tens of thousands of elephants each year and fuelling a global criminal trade in animal parts.
"We're thrilled to hear that Prime Minister Shinawatra took this opportunity to seize the global spotlight and pledge to end ivory trade in her country. But the fight to stop wildlife crime and shut down Thailand's ivory markets is not over. Prime Minister Shinawatra now needs to provide a timeline for this ban and ensure that it takes place as a matter of urgency, because the slaughter of elephants continues," said Carlos Drews head of WWF's delegation to CITES.
Thailand is currently the largest illegal ivory market behind China. Officials have certified 67 authorized ivory vendors. However, market surveys have found ivory in more than 250 shops. Much of this ivory is purchased by foreign tourists.
The prime minister's decision comes as WWF and TRAFFIC continue asking CITES governments to sanction countries fuelling the global illegal wildlife trade. Poaching has escalated to crisis levels in recent years, and is a major threat to iconic species such as elephants, rhinos and tigers.
Thailand, Nigeria and Democratic Republic of Congo have failed repeatedly to address their rampant domestic ivory markets despite CITES rules that outlaw the unregulated sale of ivory. Under treaty rules, CITES member states can recommend that parties stop trading with non-compliant countries in the 35,000 species covered under the convention, from timbers to crocodile skins.
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