Pulau Ubin mangrove restoration featured on 'Tipping Point' on Channel NewsAsia
Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
Read more!
Best of our wild blogs: 17 Apr 19
Read more!
NParks volunteer fined S$4,700 for organising illegal night photography session in Windsor Nature Park
LOW YOUJIN Today Online 17 Apr 19;
SINGAPORE — A nature guide abused his position as a volunteer with the National Parks Board (NParks) to lead a photography group into Windsor Nature Park after hours, despite knowing full well that he did not have the authority to do so.
For illegal entry into the Central Catchment Nature Reserve’s buffer park, instigating others to follow, and for blocking the entrance to its carpark, Lee Chin Tiong, 57, was fined a total of S$4,700.
The court heard on Tuesday (April 16) that Lee, also known as Ben Lee, had organised a night macro photography session on Feb 20, 2018, for a group of four photography enthusiasts and two of his assistants.
Lee, who is also the founder of the “self-styled” nature conservation group Nature Trekker, had planned to enter the park at around 8.30pm.
The park, located at Venus Drive, is closed to the public from 7pm to 7am, and this information is stated on signs posted at the park’s entrance and on NParks’ website.
The statutory board’s prosecutor Ron Goh said this enforced closure allows the “nocturnal rhythms of the animals within the reserve to be undisturbed by human activity”.
Read more!
New scheme to entice businesses to use Sentosa as living lab for innovative ideas
JANICE LIM The Star 16 Apr 19;
SINGAPORE — Businesses with innovative ideas about everything from biodiversity enhancement to waste management are being invited to use Sentosa as a testbed for their solutions.
To sweeten the deal, Sentosa Development Corporation (SDC) will even reduce or waive their rental fees on the island and help them with getting licensing and regulatory approvals.
The new initiative, Sentosa x Enterprise, aims to entice innovative businesses to use Sentosa as their live laboratory and in turn drive visitorship to the island.
Read more!
Malaysia arrests Vietnam poachers, seizes tiger, bear parts
AFP 16 Apr 19;
Tigers are considered critically endangered in Malaysia
Malaysian authorities have arrested two suspected poachers from Vietnam and seized body parts from tigers and bears, a minister said Tuesday, as the country clamps down on rampant wildlife trafficking.
The Southeast Asian nation is home to swathes of jungle and a kaleidoscope of rare creatures from elephants to orangutans and tigers, but they are frequently targeted by poachers.
Two Vietnamese men, aged 25 and 29, were arrested Monday by a wildlife enforcement team in a national park in eastern Terengganu state, said Xavier Jayakumar, water, land and natural resources minister.
The men were in possession of claws and teeth from the Malayan tiger, he said. The species once roamed the jungles of Malaysia in the thousands but is now critically endangered, with just a small number believed left in the wild.
Read more!
Indonesia: Limit number of silky sharks caught, says LIPI
The Jakarta Post 16 Apr 19;
The Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) has suggested that the number of silky sharks (Carcharhinus falciformis) caught in Indonesian waters should be restricted to prevent the species from becoming extinct.
"Silky sharks can still be caught but the number should be limited," LIPI's oceanography division head, Dirhamsyah, said on Monday at the launch of its Non-Detriment Finding (NDF) research document concerning the sustainable management of silky sharks.
Supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), he said the NDF recommended that the quota for silky sharks should be 80,000 this year, with a minimum length of 2 meters and a weight of 50 kilograms.
Read more!
Six-decade plankton study charts rise of ocean plastic waste
Handwritten journals from 50s show how plastic problem has grown to global emergency
Jonathan Watts The Guardian 16 Apr 19;
A trove of data showing when the Atlantic began choking with plastic has been uncovered in the handwritten logbooks of a little-known but doggedly persistent plankton study dating back to the middle of the last century.
From fishing twine found in the ocean in the 50s, then a first carrier bag in 1965, it reflects how the marine refuse problem grew from small, largely ignored incidents to become a matter of global concern.
The unique dataset, published in Nature Communications, is based on records from the continuous plankton recorder, a torpedo-shaped marine sampling device that has been towed across more than 6.5m nautical miles of ocean over the past 60 years.
Read more!
Singapore makes room for allotment gardens as urban farming takes root
Rina Chandran Reuters 16 Apr 19;
SINGAPORE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Rain or shine, every day for the past year, Kanti Kagrana walks a short distance from his son’s flat to Singapore’s HortPark, a national park where he grows chillies, eggplant and spinach in his allotment garden.
Kagrana, a 60-something native of India, is among a growing community of urban farmers in Singapore, which introduced allotment gardens in November 2017, modeled after England’s program which dates back to at least the 19th century.
Singapore now has more than 1,000 allotment gardens in a dozen of its national parks. Each is a raised planter bed measuring 2.5 meters by 1 meter, and can be leased for three years for S$57 ($42) annually.
“I enjoy gardening, but there is not enough space in my son’s flat,” said Kagrana, who has two plots.
Read more!
Malaysia: Animals vs humans = tragedy all round
SIM LEOI LEOI The Star 16 Apr 19;
An elephant may be pretty hard to miss but that has not stopped this majestic animal from becoming roadkill along certain highways in Malaysia, such as the Gerik-Jeli Highway in Gerik, Perak.
In June 2017, the carcass of a two-year-old elephant was found beside the highway, a victim of a collision with a car driven by a teacher who had panicked upon seeing a herd of the animals.
About two months later, a 10-year-old bull died after it was struck by a bus on the same stretch of the Gerik-Jeli Highway.
Early in January last year, a female elephant died in the same area, believed to have been electrocuted by a live wire close to the Seri Banding army camp.
Reports of such incidents as well as those of animal encroachment are on the rise as the wildlife in Malaysia contend with humans for space – and food.
Read more!
Malaysia: To save the Malayan tiger, poachers could be shot on sight
SIM LEOI LEOI The Star 16 Apr 19;
Just minutes into an interview with The Star, Datuk Abdul Kadir Abu Hashim is upset.
The Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan) director-general has held many press conferences to report the seizure of animal parts ranging from tiger skins and rhino horns to pangolin scales with his composure intact. But at this one-on-one interview, he is finding it difficult to talk about the damage that poachers’ snares inflict on wildlife in the forests.
“The animals either die or are injured when they are caught in the snare. Sometimes, we have footage or pictures captured by our camera traps showing the animals gnawing off a foot to get loose.
“In the worst cases, we will tranquillise the animal and bring it back to our centres to be treated. Usually, they die in a week or two,” he says.
Read more!
Sharks more vulnerable than originally thought
Newcastle University Phys.Org 15 Apr 19;
A study of small-scale fisheries operating from Kenya, Zanzibar and Madagascar, has revealed the massive underreporting of sharks and rays caught annually in the region.
Dominated by requiem, hammerhead, ground and hound sharks, the total annual catch of these vulnerable species equates to around 35,000 tonnes.
Led by experts at Newcastle University, UK, and published in the academic journal Biological Conservation, the team say the study highlights the substantial underreporting of catches by small scale fisheries and the urgent need to expand efforts globally to assess their impact on vulnerable species.
Impact of small-scale fisheries
Read more!
Airborne plastic particles blanket remote mountains: study
Marlowe HOOD, AFP Yahoo News 16 Apr 19;
Paris (AFP) - A secluded mountain region thought to be free of plastic pollution is in fact blanketed by airborne microplastics on a scale comparable to a major city such as Paris, alarmed researchers reported Monday.
Over a five-month period in 2017-2018, an average of 365 tiny bits of plastic settled every day on each square metre of an uninhabited, high-altitude area in the Pyrenees straddling France and Spain, they reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"It is astounding and worrying that so many particles were found in the Pyrenees field site," said lead author Steve Allen, a doctoral student at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
visitors since Nov 07