Arctic Sea Ice Shatters Historic Record Low

Wynne Parry LiveScience.com Yahoo News 27 Aug 12;

Arctic sea ice, the white cap that covers the watery northern edge of the planet, has melted back to a record low level.

However, the ice is unlikely to stop shrinking. Arctic sea melts through the summer usually reaching its annual minimum in September.

On Sunday (Aug. 26), Arctic sea-ice extent fell to 1.58 million square miles (4.10 million square kilometers), surpassing the previous low, set on Sept. 18, 2007, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports. Sea-ice extent refers to the area of ocean covered at least 15 percent by sea ice, according to the NSIDC.

The record low, set in 2007, stood at 1.61 square miles (4.17 square kilometers).

But this year's melt is unlikely to stop soon. The melt season still has another two or three weeks to go. [10 Things to Know about Sea Ice]

Continuous satellite records of sea-ice extent began in 1979. But in recent years, satellite data have shown a shift in the fluctuating ice cover. For example, including this year, the six lowest ice extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last six years, the NSIDC reports.

Scientists attribute the shift to a combination of natural forces, for example, a storm in early August coincided with an acceleration of melt that occurred at the same time. However, over time, the effects of winds, clouds and other natural conditions should, in theory, balance themselves out. It is the emission of greenhouse gases that alters the long-term trend by warming the planet, Walt Meier, a research scientist at NSIDC told LiveScience last year.

This year's melt rate was much faster than the normal rate for this time of year, the NSIDC reported today (Aug. 27).

Sea ice matters to the animals, such as polar bears and walruses, that depend on it for habitat, and scientists worry the loss of ice could have serious consequences for them.

Sea ice also affects weather and global climate, because it reflects most of the sun's energy back out to space. If sea ice melts, the dark water beneath it absorbs most of the energy, which in turn enters the natural system. In this way, scientists believe the melting of sea ice will aggravate global warming.

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Best of our wild blogs: 27 Aug 12

Latest Green Jobs in Singapore [20 - 26 Aug 2012]
from Green Business Times

Wild shore fun for kids during the September holidays
from wild shores of singapore

It’s September – the International Coastal Cleanup is here!
from Toddycats!

Trash talking
from The annotated budak

Year-Round Cleanup – Nestle R&D Singapore team-building coastal cleanup exercise spends three hours at ECP (16th July 2012) from News from the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore

lineated barbet @ kent ridge - Aug2012
from sgbeachbum

Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker feeding and calling
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Javanese Grasshopper
from Monday Morgue

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Malaysia: Johor logging 'will not encroach' on wildlife trails

Jassmine Shadioe New Straits Times 27 Aug 12;

PRIORITY SITES: Forestry Department says no projects will be allowed on Central Forest Spine

JOHOR BARU: STEPS are being taken by the Johor Forestry Department to ensure that logging activities will not encroach on natural trails of wild animals that connect the various forest reserves.

Acting director Yahaya Mahamood said preventive measures were in place to ensure logging activities were kept out of areas designated under the Central Forest Spine (CFS) project.

The CFS identified 31 priority sites across Peninsular Malaysia where forests need to be connected either via underground culverts or by replanting tracts of land to become forests.

Connecting these tracts of forest allows for better movement of wild animals and makes it easier for the transfer of genes and plant seeds.

Yahaya said out of three companies which had applied to conduct logging activities near the Sembrong Forest Reserve in Mersing, only two were allowed to do so on their proposed sites.

"The third company was asked to move out of its proposed site, as the area had encroached on the CFS," he said when commenting on a report by an English daily about logging activities that had begun near the Sembrong Forest Reserve in northeastern Johor.

Yahaya said no companies would be allowed to conduct logging activities in the CFS corridor.

"The company agreed to move their operations from the affected areas."

Yahaya refused to name any of the three companies. He said the three companies were awarded contracts to fell and replant rubber trees in 2006 under the Forest Plantation Project.

The rubber trees under the project, he said, were of a species called timber latex clone. This species is planted for its rubberwood, not its latex.

However, a year later, issues concerning the CFS cropped up.

He said after concerns were raised, the projects were delayed until 2010.

"We cannot simply cancel the project after awarding the contract to the companies because of their investments and there were legal issues involved. Thus, areas which the companies had earmarked for logging and which affected the CFS were reviewed and the project removed.

"The corridor includes areas like the Endau-Rompin National Park, and the forest complex to the east (Labis Timur Forest Reserve and the Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve) and southeast (Mersing Forest Reserve, Lenggor Tengah Forest Reserve and Lenggor Timur Forest Reserve)."

The network of the CFS spans throughout the peninsula from the north to the south and involves eight states -- Pahang, Johor, Negri Sembilan, Selangor, Perak, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu."

Probe forest reserve plan in Mersing, Johor urged
Desiree Tresa Gasper The Star 27 Aug 12;

JOHOR BARU: The Johor Government needs to examine current policies and look at what went wrong at the Sembrong Forest Reserve in Mersing to prevent further damage.

Stating this, Malaysian Nature Society Johor chairman Vincent Chow said reports in The Star that two rubber plantation companies were logging at the reserve were serious and needed to be dealt with immediately.

“I believe there are many more such cases in the state. This shows there may be weaknesses in current policies.

“Many are in the dark about the role of the Central Forest Spine Masterplan and unaware that animals and the environment will suffer without it,” he said, adding that the plan provided for the animals to migrate via linked forest areas throughout the peninsula.

Chow said that by logging the reserve forests, loggers break the link and this would result in animals being stranded, hence affecting their migration patterns and survival.

Meanwhile, environmentalist P. Sivakumar called on the Government to stop all logging in Sem-brong and ban logging at all forest reserve areas.

“It is our responsibility to preserve the forests for the future generation,” he said.

In KUALA LUMPUR, Transparency International (TI) Malaysia secretary-general Josie M. Fernandez urged the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to probe what she called poor governance and weak institutions in the Forest Department.

“The Sembrong Forest Reserve has been logged because governance and accountability mechanisms, including transparency, were not implemented in awarding concessions,” she said.

“Reforms of laws and policies related to forestry and land use are necessary as logging and agriculture at state levels cannot be addressed by existing national policies,” Fernandez said

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Best of our wild blogs: 26 Aug 12

30 Aug (Thu): Siti to speak on seagrasses at Green Drinks
from teamseagrass

A Long Hike Into The Forest
from Beauty of Fauna and Flora in Nature

Butterfly of the Month - August 2012
from Butterflies of Singapore

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PSI reading still in good range, says NEA

Channel NewsAsia 25 Aug 12;

SINGAPORE: A slight hazy condition affected Singapore on Friday evening, with prevailing winds from the south of Singapore.

The National Environment Agency (NEA) said the 24-hour PSI reading at 10pm was between 34 and 47, in the good range.

The PSI at 8am on Saturday was 47 (good).

NEA said Singapore is currently experiencing the Southwest Monsoon season which typically lasts from June to September/early October.

NEA said this is the traditional dry season for the southern ASEAN region.

Over the past few days, weather conditions in the region have become drier and an increase in hotspot activities has been observed in Sumatra.

NEA said scattered hotspots with smoke haze have been detected mostly over central and southern Sumatra.

NEA is monitoring the haze situation closely and will provide updates should the air quality deteriorate.

- CNA/cc

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Malaysia: EIAs required, but state government has final say

New Straits Times 26 Aug 12;

WILDLIFE as well as plant life must be taken into account under the environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines.

"We have to study and document how the project affects wildlife and plant life," says Dr G. Balamurugan, from the ERE consulting group, who has done numerous EIAs for development.

He says when the EIA was introduced in 1988, it was initially not very effective as the Department of Environment (DOE) was still not well established then.

"Over the years, it has improved. It has tighter guidelines and public awareness is also very high. It is definitely better now."

However, Balamurugan says the DOE can improve further especially in certain states, such as Kelantan, Terengganu and Johor, where land is being cleared for the planting of rubber timber as well as oil palm.

"They are getting approvals. These areas may be wildlife crossings. There is a need to be more alert."

He says in some cases, there is a lot of pressure from the state governments for development.

"Kelantan ignores all EIA requirements. Even the national park is being invaded. If all these state governments respect the central forest spine, then there will be no problem.

"Whenever land is developed and if there are animals living there, some will run away while others will die. If the land is an island of forest, they have nowhere to run to.

"When they go on the roads, they get run over. If they go into the villages, they get shot."

However, he says, there are many cases where the DOE has stopped a project by referring to it as "sensitive to the environment".

Balamurugan says the current DOE procedure is to refer to the National Physical Plan to see if an area is sensitive.

"All the sensitive areas have been mapped and identified.

"Under the DOE's current guidelines, all important wetlands, freshwater swamps and national parks have been mapped."

He adds that the total area involved is about 50 per cent of the land area in the country which is protected.

"Sometimes, they will allow exceptions, for example, where the Public Works Department (PWD) is building a road through the forest. This is on the basis of national importance and public good.

"These roads require wildlife crossings. Most PWD projects over the last five years have culverts and viaducts to allow animals to cross."

Balamurugan says the government is working on creating what is called the central forest spine.

This project is under the purview of the Town and Country Planning Department which is responsible for all land use in the peninsula.

The central forest spine identifies 31 priority sites across the peninsula where forests need to be connected either via underground culverts or by replanting tracts of land to become forests.

Connecting these tracts of forest allow better transfer of genes as well as plant seeds.

He says every professional is accountable when working on an EIA and has to report truthfully.

"A number of consultants have been suspended and given warnings in the past. The DOE is now more strict with them."

He says a number of methods are used to determine whether animals roam a particular area.

"The existence of animals at a particular site can be derived from secondary data, such as studies by non-governmental organisations, the Forestry Department and others on tigers and elephants."

The land may be where the animals live or it may be used as a crossing from season to season as they migrate.

Once secondary data is collected, they proceed with the field work.

This may involve trapping, in the case of small animals, or identifying footprints and droppings in the case of bigger animals like elephants and tigers.

"In the case of birds, we may go to the field to observe over a period of 18 hours, 24 hours or even one week."

The requirements for EIAs differ from project to project.

Balamurugan says while housing estates and townships below 50ha do not require an EIA, all roads, no matter what size, require an EIA.

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Year after Irene, New Yorkers ponder sea barriers

Jennifer Peltz Associated Press Yahoo News 23 Aug 12;

NEW YORK (AP) — Two years before Hurricane Irene created the prospect of a flooding nightmare in New York City, 100 scientists and engineers met to sketch out a bold defense: massive, moveable barriers to shield the city from a storm-stirred sea.

Though the storm caused billions of dollars in damage along the Eastern Seaboard, Irene proved not to be the urban catastrophe forecasters feared. But in the wake of the close call a year ago, elected officials and community groups are pressing for an evaluation of whether sea barriers make sense for New York.

The city has been gathering information, while stressing that barriers are only one of many ideas being studied.

Initially hesitant to recommend spending money studying a remote possibility, state Assemblyman Richard Gottfried now finds the barrier idea realistic enough that he and state Sen. Thomas Duane have urged the city to give it a thorough examination. Gottfried changed his mind before Irene, but feels the storm — which hit the city head-on as a tropical storm on Aug. 28, 2011 — brought the point home to others.

"I think it did make it clear to a lot of New Yorkers that we could not take our safety for granted," he said this week.

To advocates, Irene — which shuttered subways, spurred evacuation orders for 370,000 people and raised fears that a surge of seawater would cripple the U.S. financial capital — added urgency to what they see as the best hope for protecting New York against a mounting threat. But some experts believe the city is better off focusing on more moderate, immediate measures to limit potential damage from storms and rising seas.

The discussion illuminates a potential dividing line for this city and others projected to face a more flood-prone future in a changing climate: take big, difficult steps in hopes of thwarting high water, or a roster of smaller ones intended to help manage it?

New York, for its part, says it's giving equal time to both approaches.

The city administration is working toward a hard-numbers analysis of natural risks and how well various coast-protection techniques would address them, said Adam Freed, the deputy director of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. Storm-surge barriers are among the options being examined; officials have talked in recent months with some participants in a 2009 academic conference on the issue.

In the meantime, the city also has flood-proofed some places — by installing floodgates at sewage plants, for example, and raising the ground level while redeveloping a low-lying area in Queens.

"There's no one-size-fits-all solution to the risk we face, and it's not just one risk," Freed said, noting that the city also is preparing for more frequent heat waves, more extreme rainstorms and other anticipated global-warming effects. "It is going to be a suite of strategies that encompass everything."

Proponents say sea barriers would solve a big piece of the problem, and they point to examples in cities ranging from London to Providence, R.I. But some scientists and engineers feel the structures could create a false sense of security and raise environmental and social-equity questions.

"Who gets included to be behind the gate, and who doesn't get included? ... How do you make that decision in a fair way?" said Robert Swanson, an oceanographer at Long Island's Stony Brook University, where the barrier idea is a topic of cordial debate.

Two of his colleagues, oceanography professor Malcolm J. Bowman and lecturer and engineer Douglas Hill, are driving forces behind the idea and helped galvanize the 2009 conference, which featured conceptual designs from engineering firms.

One strategy entailed an estimated $9.1 billion set of barriers a mile long or shorter at three critical points around the city's waterways. The network would protect Manhattan and parts of the four outer boroughs and New Jersey, but not some vulnerable swaths of Brooklyn and Queens.

Some of them stood to gain protection in an alternative design: a single, 5-mile-long barrier between Sandy Hook, N.J., and the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, estimated at $5.9 billion.

Both approaches were designed to block a 25-foot storm surge but had navigational locks or other mechanisms to let water and ship traffic flow under normal conditions. Some designs featured visible walls or berms above the waterline, but one envisioned a wall that would lie flat underwater and rise into position when needed.

Advocates note that an 1821 hurricane flooded what's now Manhattan's financial district — and that experts estimate the city could face a surge as high as 25 feet and a 3 million-person evacuation if threatened by a storm as strong as a notorious 1938 hurricane that sawed through nearby Long Island. Moreover, the city projects global warming could boost sea levels by up to 4 ½ feet by the end of the century, making flooding a growing threat.

Troubled by the projections, retired newspaper publisher and community activist Robert Trentlyon started broaching storm-surge barriers with local organizations and officials about two years ago.

Then came Irene, a 500-mile-wide hurricane that weakened to a tropical storm with 65-mph winds just before its center made landfall at Brooklyn's Coney Island.

"There's absolutely no question: From the time of Irene, for the next six months, people were more concerned," said Trentlyon, who now makes his rounds with a growing file of supportive statements.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler urged city officials in a letter this month to take a comprehensive look at storm-surge barriers, bulkheads and other flood-fighting devices.

The City Council's Environmental Protection Committee heard from barrier advocates, among others, at a hearing in December, and Chairman James Gennaro would like the barriers to be among ideas getting further review by a city climate-change task force.

The council passed a proposal Wednesday to expand the group's scope to assess how heat, storms and flooding affect various aspects of the city.

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West Africa forest biomass 'on rise despite drought'

Mark Kinver BBC News 26 Aug 12;

The carbon storage capacity of protected forests in West Africa has increased despite the region suffering a 40-year drought, a study suggests.

A team of UK and Ghanaian researchers found that the tree composition in these areas favoured species that were able to cope with drier conditions.

Previous studies suggested that drought conditions resulted in less carbon being stored as vegetation died.

The findings have been published in the journal Ecology Letters.

"Despite the long-term drought, there was no biomass loss in the forests. In fact, the biomass actually increased during that period," explained co-author Sophie Fauset from the University of Leeds.

Biomass is a vital component in the global carbon cycle. When plants grow, they absorb carbon dioxide and water in the photosynthesis process.

While oxygen is released into the atmosphere as a waste product of this process, the absorbed carbon primarily remains locked in the plant until it dies.

"We think it is the result of a shift in species composition," Dr Fauset said, explaining why the study showed an increase in biomass.

"Because you have got this long-term environmental shift, it is possible for the species composition of the forests to reshuffle slightly, so the species that can survive under those conditions are favoured.

"This means you are getting less negative impacts of the drought."
Changing landscape

The team of UK and Ghanaian researchers tracked more than 10,000 trees between 1990 and 2010.

The West Africa region has experienced drought conditions since 1970. Rainfall has fallen by up to 23% compared with pre-1970 levels.

Dr Fauset said the study widened the current thinking on the consequences of drought conditions on an area's flora and fauna.

"It is generally thought that if you have droughts then you are going to see a decrease in biomass," she told BBC News.

"Certainly, studies that have looked at short-term, quite extreme droughts do seem to show biomass loss.

"It could be that the increase in biomass (recorded in this study) could be the result of something else, but we think that the maintenance of the forest structure, despite the drought conditions, is a result of a change in species composition.

"This basically means that you cannot take those short-term studies of extreme droughts and extrapolate the findings to a long-term event with different kinds of precipitation changes."

Findings presented at an international forest conference earlier this year found that tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other major forest regions.

It suggested that the region's surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years.

As a result, they were better suited to cope with future shifts in the climate.

The continent's tropical forests form the second-largest continuous forested area in the world.

Dr Fauset observed: "It is very important for the global carbon cycle that these forests are maintained."

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Demand for Horn Fuels Record-High Rhino Poaching

Live Science Staff Yahoo News 24 Aug 12;

A rhino poaching crisis in South Africa is fed by an insatiable demand in Vietnam for the large animals' horns, which are believed to promote health, cure hangovers and even cancer, according to a new report.

In South Africa, more and more rhinos are being killed illegally. In 2007, 13 rhinos were poached, this number rose steadily to a record 448 in 2011. In early 2012, rhinos were being poached at a rate of almost two rhinos per day, and officials expect the total loss to stand at 515 by the end of this year if the rate continues, according to the report issued by TRAFFIC, a nongovernmental global network that monitors wildlife trade.

Arrests are rising too, but organized crime is involved, TRAFFIC reports. The crime syndicates involved in rhino poaching are also linked to drug and diamond smuggling, as well as human trafficking and the illegal trade in other wildlife parts, such as elephant ivory, the report says.

The demand for the horn has prompted those who want it to attempt to exploit legal sport hunts for rhinoceros, according to the report, which notes that earlier this year South Africa attempted to address this problem by suspending the issuance of hunting licenses to Vietnamese nationals, and introducing other changes. However, rhino traders are attempting to circumvent these changes, TRAFFIC reports.

Meanwhile, criminals have begun looking elsewhere for horns. In recent years at least 65 horns on display in South Africa have been stolen, as have others in the United States and Europe, TRAFFIC reports. [Images from a Rhino Bust]

"However, with the surging demand from Asia, people willing to pay high prices to get their hands on rhino horn, and little fear of capture by those smuggling horn, it was perhaps inevitable that this 'commodity' would catch the attention of the hardened criminal fraternity, creating a 'perfect storm' for rhino poaching and horn trade," said Jo Shaw, a program officer with TRAFFIC and a co-author of the report, in a statement.

Vietnam provides the main market for horn. The primary users are those who believe in the horn's detoxification properties. Affluent users frequently use the horn as a hangover cure and general health tonic, grinding it up and mixing it with water or alcohol.

The horn is also sometimes marketed as a cancer cure for terminally ill patients, "a cynical marketing poly to increase the illicit trade," according to TRAFFIC.

"The surge in rhino horn demand from Viet Nam has nothing to do with meeting traditional medicine needs, it's to supply a recreational drug to party goers or to con dying cancer patients out of their cash for a miracle rhino horn cure that will never happen," said Tom Milliken, a rhino expert with TRAFFIC, and a co-author of the report.

Poaching has already had grave consequences for rhinos. In the last decade, the western black rhino went extinct and the Indochinese Javan rhinoceros was eradicated from Vietnam, with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in Java.

The 175-nation treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, makes nearly all commercial trade in rhino horns and other species threatened with extinction illegal. Signatories also committed to regulating trade within their borders.

The report is called The South Africa—Vietnam Rhino Horn Trade Nexus. TRAFFIC is a joint program of the World Wildlife Fund and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

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Best of our wild blogs: 25 Aug 12

Green Drinks: Seagrass & Aqua Republica
from Green Drinks Singapore

Ubin Wayang Schedule 2012
from Pulau Ubin Stories

Looking with luck
from The annotated budak

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New natural history museum coming to fruition, thanks to fortunate events

Destiny achieved: A journey of discovery
Peter K.L. Ng The Straits Times 25 Aug 12;

IT HAS been four years since the National University of Singapore (NUS) started on its odyssey to raise funds for a new natural history museum for Singapore. In 2014, the Raffles Museum of colonial vintage (and glory) will finally be reinstated as the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in the university.

It has been a very surreal voyage for me - and while the journey is far from over, a moment of reflection is perhaps timely. After all, I have just been part of one of the most remarkable chapters in the museum's long and illustrious history. This is a museum envisioned almost 190 years ago to show the people of Singapore how rich the region's biodiversity was. It saw that hope almost extinguished in the early 1970s, was given a reprieve towards the end of the millennium, and in two short years will have come full circle when it is resurrected.

The Greeks believed that the Fates decide the course of all human affairs. As a scientist and a cynic, I refuse to believe in the hand of Fate. How can I? The scientific method frowns on destiny as an explanation for human events. But logic aside, it is very hard for a person not to harbour a nagging suspicion that the three sisters of the Moerae have intervened somewhere, somehow.

Any objective person reviewing the history of the museum cannot help but be surprised by the number of "lucky breaks" it has had. That said, eloquent American politician William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) once commented: "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." The events that have led to the new museum bear testament to the truth of his words.

The idea for a museum was first planted by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1823, but he did not manage to see his brainchild (he died in 1826). Formally established in 1874 as the Raffles Library and Museum, it became a powerhouse of zoological research until independence. It survived a crippling war from 1940 to 1945, coming out "miraculously" unscathed.

In 1970, when the powers-to- be ordered the zoological collections to be ditched in the name of economic pragmatism, a small band of heroes and heroines led by the late Roland Sharma at the then University of Singapore ignored executive orders and salvaged the hundreds of thousands of priceless specimens.

They took custody of them despite the lack of resources, until such time when the world saw the light. They held the line even though capitulation would have been easier. The world changed - as it always does - and the collections became part of NUS when it moved to Kent Ridge in the mid-1980s. The museum became the "reinvented" Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research in 1998 when the university wanted more research and education out of it, and added a tiny public gallery to cater for the public. And when Singapore's Renaissance man, Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh, discovered that this century-old collection was still intact in early 2005, he cajoled the university authorities into seeing if it could form the basis of a natural history museum for the country.

This was when I got tossed into the deep end. When the dean of the Faculty of Science, Professor Lee Soo Ying, asked me to helm the museum in 1998, I leapt at the chance. My mission was simple - raise its research profile. Having used the museum's collections for over a decade, it was something I could not say no to. When Tommy threw the challenge at NUS in 2005, the then dean of science, Professor Tan Eng Chye (he is provost today), acted decisively.

In late 2005, with funding from NUS and American entrepreneur Frank Levinson, five staff visited successful American museums to understand what it takes to make a natural history museum work. Three "must-haves" arose from this trip: good corporate governance; a good endowment plan; and dinosaurs! So much for the theory. While NUS is a well-governed establishment, it certainly had no endowment and no dinosaurs. A new natural history museum? No way.

Fast forward to Museum Day 2009. With forward planning and good press support, we were inundated with visitors - thousands of people crowding into a 200 sq m gallery sited behind a small building deep in the bowels of NUS. The visitors growled - tough to find, hard to get to, gallery too small, too little displayed - complaints galore. But there was one common denominator - they all loved the place and echoed Tommy's hope: Bring back Singapore's natural history museum!

The press picked it up and took up the call. Then the Fates took over. Enter an anonymous donor who read about the museum, put $10 million on the table in December 2009 to get the vision going. Enter a new university president, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan, who realised the museum's potential and set aside prime land at NUS for the project. But Chorh Chuan was a realist - he knew we needed more money to build a museum.

Enter the return of a "prodigal son", Professor Leo Tan, who had just retired as director of the National Institute of Education and rejoined NUS as its director of special projects - just as we embarked on fund raising. A man with an amazing network of like-minded people after three decades of public service, Leo had raised funds for all manner of national projects. But this was one he particularly savoured - he was a student when he saw his professors save the collections in 1970. To resurrect the museum would close the circle.

Enter senior government officers who mulled over how to help - and some very influential men did help in ways that cannot be formally documented. The Singapore Totalisator Board chipped in with $10 million, and thousands of smaller donors and members of the public added $1 million.

Next came the Lee Foundation, which has a long history of supporting local endeavours; it saw the museum's collection as a national treasure that belonged to the people and should never have been given up in the first place. It made up the difference needed to make the dream a reality - $25 million. Leo was true to his pedigree. In a short six months, he and his band of "merry men and women" raised the additional $36 million needed to build a new museum.

I watched in amazement as a surprised Chorh Chuan happily gave the go-ahead for the new museum. Mind you, this was accomplished in the aftermath of the 2009 financial meltdown! As this was mainly donated money, the Government provided matching funds to the university - the museum now has an endowment.

Early last year, three dinosaurs were offered to the museum. The sellers wanted a good home for these scientifically valuable specimens and were prepared to accept less money if all three could be kept together. We agreed.

Over the next few months, I again watched in amazement as Leo and his team raised the necessary $8 million to acquire and set up exhibits centred on the dinosaurs. In the span of 11/2 "crazy" years, NUS had fulfilled all three requirements envisioned in 2005 for a good museum - governance, endowment and dinosaurs.

As a witness to these developments, all I can say is that I was dumbfounded by the series of events, all unconnected, but yet had to line up in almost perfect symmetry for things to have happened the way they did. That it happened at all defies logic. Just as amazing was what a "few good men (and women)" accomplished in a short time. The efforts of Leo and his team are unprecedented. To have raised such large sums of money in 18 months from so many people and organisations has almost no parallels in Asia; certainly none in Singapore. Until this exercise, philanthropy had been a powerful tool for charitable causes, the arts or medicine, but never for science on this scale. They had finally put the means on the table for a new natural history museum to be built for Singapore. There is now no turning back. The Fates have spoken.

The writer is director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, NUS.

By Invitation features leading writers and thinkers from Singapore and the region.

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Prof Leo Tan on building the new Singapore natural history museum

Prof stresses importance of not saying 'no'
Kezia Toh Straits Times 25 Aug 12;

BUILDING a museum is not quite what one would expect a university lecturer to do.

But Professor Leo Tan gamely took on the task, helming a team to raise $46 million in just six months to build the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at the National University of Singapore.

When it is completed in 2014, the 7,500 sq m museum will house three much-touted dinosaur fossils from Wyoming in the United States.

It is no mean feat, but that is not the most difficult thing the 67-year-old has had to do.

The marine biologist by training has also had to take on the role of administrator in his previous roles heading the Science Centre and the National Institute of Education.

Yesterday, Prof Tan stressed the importance of not accepting - and not saying - "no", during the Fullerton-St Joseph's Institution Leadership Lecture series at Fullerton Hotel.

Even though he was "reluctantly thrust" into some jobs during his career, he learnt to make the best of them by first ensuring that his staff found their jobs fulfilling. He told the audience: "When you say yes, you get to learn new things and skills you think are not useful for your current job, but actually, the things you do outside of your current job teach you how to do your... job better - this is the paradox.

"So don't refuse when somebody comes to you with an offer that doesn't seem attractive... meaningful or relevant to you, because it will become relevant as you move along the chain."

Prof Tan, who graduated from St Joseph's Institution in 1963, is also president and fellow of the Singapore National Academy of Science.

The lecture series, now in its second instalment, features former SJI boys who have played significant roles in Singapore's development. Previous speakers included Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, former foreign minister George Yeo and National Kidney Foundation chairman Gerard Ee. The next speaker will be retired senior judge Richard Magnus.

Yesterday's event saw 150 guests and students, including representatives from community and business groups, and professional associations.

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