Malaysia: Pahang ready for second wave of floods

M. Hamzah Jamaluddin New Straits Times 5 Jan 14;

MEASURES IN PLACE: Sounding sirens among steps to be taken, says state secretary
KUANTAN: SEVERAL measures have been introduced to ensure that the evacuation of flood victims and the distribution of aid in Pahang will be carried out smoothly in the event of a second wave of floods this month.

State Natural Disaster Relief Committee chairman Datuk Seri Muhammad Safian Ismail said police and the Information Department would deploy their vehicles and sound sirens to warn the public if their areas would be flooded.

"Based on weather forecasts, the second wave of floods is predicted to occur between New Year's Eve and Monday (tomorrow). Our main focus will be Sungai Isap and Cenderawasih here," he said yesterday.

Safian, who is also state secretary, said the area here had been divided into several areas. They would each be handled by a specific agency to ensure that there were no overlapping roles and confusion among the agencies involved.

He said the area along the left side of Jalan Gambang to Kampung Ubai would be handled by the army, Bukit Rangin and Permatang Badak (Fire and Rescue Department), town centre and Cenderawasih (Civil Defence Department), Beserah to Kemaman border (Royal Malaysian Navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency) and Kampung Padang to Sungai Lembing (police).

"The agencies will also prepare meals for the flood victims," he said, adding that the new approach only involved Kuantan because of the high number of complaints received during the first wave of floods last month.

As for the other districts, he said existing standard operating procedures would be carried out with some improvements, including early warning.

He said new relief centres had already been identified in Indera Mahkota here to shelter flood victims.

"If a school is turned into a relief centre, the administration staff and teachers will help distribute aid to flood victims while Kuantan Municipal Council staff will assist the Welfare Department at other buildings."

For other districts, he said the Village Security and Development Committees would help distribute aid as usual.

He said the Drainage and Irrigation Department and the local authorities had also cleaned the drainage systems in their areas, including here, where more than 30,000 people were evacuated during the first wave of floods.

On claims that the irrigation system here could not cope with heavy rains during the monsoon season, Safian said the 940mm rainfall recorded between Dec 2 and 3 last year would require three new rivers within the town areas to effectively channel the water to the sea and avoid massive flooding.

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Scientists Uncover Hidden River of Rubbish Threatening to Devastate Wildlife

Science Daily 2 Jan 14;

Thousands of pieces of plastic have been discovered, submerged along the river bed of the upper Thames Estuary by scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London and the Natural History Museum.

The sheer amount of plastic recovered shows there is an unseen stream of rubbish flowing through London which could be a serious threat to aquatic wildlife. The findings, published online in Marine Pollution Bulletin, highlight the cause for concern, not only for ecosystems around the river but for the North Sea, in to which the Thames flows.

Using nets designed to catch Chinese mitten crabs, Royal Holloway and the Natural History Museum scientists documented rubbish collected during a three-month trial. More than 8,000 pieces of plastic were collected, including large numbers of cigarette packaging, food wrappers and cups, but more than a fifth of waste was made up of sanitary products.

Dr Dave Morritt, a Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology at Royal Holloway and co-author of the study says: "The unusual aspect of the study is that these nets are originally designed to trap fish and crabs moving along the river bed, so we can see that the majority of this litter is hidden below the surface. This underwater litter must be taken into account when predicting the amount of pollution entering our rivers and seas, not just those items that we can see at the surface and washed up on shore. The potential impacts this could have for wildlife are far reaching: not only are the species that live in and around the river affected, but also those in seas that rivers feed into."

The waste collected for the study is only a small snapshot of the volume of litter which may exist at the bottom of the Thames. Plastic bags and other large items were unlikely to get caught in the small nets so the true extent of the problem is still unknown.

Dr Paul Clark, a researcher, at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study says: "All of this waste, which was mostly plastic, was hidden underwater so Londoners probably don't realise that it's there. Plastic can have a damaging impact on underwater life. Large pieces can trap animals but smaller pieces can be in advertently eaten. This litter moves up and down the river bed depending on tides. The movement causes the pieces of plastic to break down into smaller fragments. These are small enough to be eaten by even the smallest animals, which are in turn eaten by larger fish and birds. Once digested, plastic can release toxic chemicals which are then passed through the food chain. These toxic chemicals, in high doses, could harm the health of wildlife."

Scientists are increasingly pressing for changes to both policy and consumer behaviours, as the dangers of plastics become more apparent.

David Morritt, Paris V. Stefanoudis, Dave Pearce, Oliver A. Crimmen, Paul F. Clark. Plastic in the Thames: A river runs through it. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2013; DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.10.035

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Australia saw hottest year on record in 2013

BBC 4 Jan 14;

Australia experienced its hottest year on record in 2013, officials have said.

Temperatures were 1.2C above the long term average, the warmest since records began in 1910, the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual report.

The year also saw a record-warm winter that led into the most devastating fires in Sydney since 1968, it said.

The warming in Australia was consistent with global climate trends, where rising temperatures were influenced by greenhouse gases, it added.

According to the bureau, all but one of the last 10 years have had warmer-than-average temperatures in Australia.

"The Australian region warming is very similar to that seen at the global scale, and the past year emphasises that the warming trend continues," the bureau said in its annual climate statement.

The report listed significant climate events in 2013, including "the most destructive fires in the Sydney region since at least 1968", which were affected by "a record-warm and dry winter and an early spring".

Neil Plummer, from the bureau, told broadcaster ABC: "Most of the warming has occurred since around 1950, and that's consistent with the global pattern."

He said that figures from the bureau, and other bureaus around the word, provided a "body of evidence that we're all seeing a warming over Australia and a warming world".

The news will likely add to criticism from environmentalists that the new conservative government is not doing enough to tackle climate change, the BBC's Jon Donnison in Sydney reports.

Ministers recently cut funding for a number of organisations carrying out research into global warming, and the government has also pledged to abolish a carbon tax which makes the country's biggest polluters pay for the amount of greenhouse cases they produce, our correspondent adds.

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Best of our wild blogs: 4 Jan 14

Proposal for Conversations on Sustainable Singapore
from Green Future Solutions

Olive-backed sunbird courtship dance
from My Nature Experiences

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Environmental group pushes for more nature parks

Nature Society urges focus on sustainability in response to URA’s draft Master Plan
Kok Xing Hui Today Online 4 Jan 14;

SINGAPORE — Conduct environmental impact assessment on development plans, designate more areas as nature parks and plant trees that could act as buffers between development sites and the nature parks that they are built close to. These were among the recommendations tabled by the Nature Society (Singapore) in response to the Urban Redevelopment Authority’s draft Master Plan released last November.

Making public its 24-page report yesterday, the society said the Master Plan seems to involve more salvaging rather than conserving or preserving effort, with an emphasis on curbing the impact of urbanisation. A thrust towards sustainability should be employed instead, it said.

The group submitted its recommendations on Dec 19 last year, saying environmental impact assessments should be conducted for development plans to assess their impact on the biodiversity as well as the culture, recreational, economy, air and water — depending on the size of the green area. It said residents and other stakeholders should also be consulted and that such assessments must be made before the development plans are finalised and put out for tender.

While creating more public parks is laudable, the NSS felt the emphasis should be on designating wildlife-rich areas, such as the Kranji Marshes Park, as nature parks. This will help preserve the areas’ biodiversity, while making them accessible to the public for eco-friendly uses. Suggestions put forth include the “highly scenic and beautiful” Sungei Khatib Bongsu, the mudflats and mangroves of Sungei Mandai, Bukit Brown Cemetery and the secondary forest in Clementi, which has recorded 21 per cent of the total bird species in Singapore.

The society said it was grossly deficient that out of the 29 per cent of land identified as Spontaneous Greenery (comprising secondary forest, scrubland and mangrove among others) by a research team from National University of Singapore, only 4.4 per cent of that are truly or permanently protected as Nature Reserves.

Marine conservation is pretty deplorable, said the NSS, adding it had submitted proposals to the authorities requesting for four coral zones to be restored as nature areas, but only one has been designated as such so far.

The status of parks classified as nature areas should also be clearer, the group said, pointing out that some are located within military zones and the NSS has “no clue” what the sizes and boundaries of these areas are. It cited the examples of Mandai Mangrove, Khatib Bongsu, Pulau Semakau and the four coral zones, which were nature areas in 1993 but “deleted as such in the 2012 revised SGP (Singapore Green Plan)”. Nature area Chek Jawa has also been planned for reclamation at its shoreline.

The NSS also proposed that the percentage of secondary forests, which it said are extremely important and viable habitats for native fauna, under the SGP be increased from 6 to 12 per cent and that this should come from outside the nature reserves.

Related links
NSS's Feedback on the URA Master Plan 2013

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Programme aiming to connect children with nature makes comeback

Wendy Wong Channel NewsAsia 3 Jan 14;

SINGAPORE: A programme engaging children with Singapore's green spaces returns this year, with the aim of bringing them closer to nature.

The second edition of the Young Explorer Programme was launched by Environment and Water Resources Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan on Friday.

The three-month programme - organised by the National Geographic Channel - takes a hands-on approach in getting children aged between seven and 10 to learn about Singapore's green corridors and spaces.

Participants go on outdoor lessons through nature trails and workshops, conducted by partners such as the National Parks Board and Nature Society Singapore.

The trails include those to the Singapore Botanic Gardens and Bottle Tree Park.

Conservation biologist and National Geographic host Casey Anderson will lead 10 participants and their parents on an expedition to Borneo's Kinabatagan River in March.

They will also be taught the importance of environmental conservation and sustainability.

Elango Velautham, assistant director at Singapore Botanic Gardens, said: "The kids can understand what nature is all about, and using that information, learn further and develop themselves to become better guardians of nature, as future citizens of Singapore."

The programme hopes to involve up to 4,000 participants this year, with registration starting on Saturday.

- CNA/xq

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Near Singapore’s Concrete, an Oasis of Nature - Pulau Ubin

Sanjay Surana New York Times 2 Jan 14;

After cycling a half-mile along a soggy clay track that sliced through a corridor of rubber trees, tailed by an electric-crimson-colored dragonfly, arches of bamboo creating a canopy, I emerged by a small, silty lake. A dilapidated jetty reached out into the water, a mint-green fishing boat loosely tied to it; a splintery, whitewashed wooden sign nailed to a sea grape tree announced “Cold Drinks.”

But there wasn’t a soul in sight, only a dozing dog that roused itself, momentarily, at my presence. Such are the simple, solitary pleasures of Pulau Ubin.

This four-square-mile island, formerly thrumming with granite quarries (Pulau Ubin is Malay for Granite Island), is only a 10-minute boat ride from its motherland, Singapore, but the gulf between the two couldn’t be more pronounced. While the Lion City, which marked its 48th year of independence last month, has grown rapidly in the last five decades — outward more than 20 percent (through land reclamation), upward (via the endless construction of office and condo towers), financially (it’s the world’s third-richest country in gross domestic product terms), and in crowdedness (it has the second-highest country population density after Monaco) — Pulau Ubin, which has no electricity or running water, is like a land that time forgot, stuck in the 1960s, when newly independent Singapore was a scattering of low-slung, stilt-housed villages. And for that, many Singaporeans are thankful.

According to folklore, hilly Ubin was formed when an elephant, a pig and a frog challenged one another to cross the waters to Johor, across the Straits of Johor. Whichever failed — and all three did — was turned to stone. The pig and elephant became Pulau Ubin, and the frog Pulau Sekudu (Frog Island), visible off Ubin’s southern coast. The stone, granite, was the island’s sole industry from the 1800s up to 1999, when the last quarry closed, and in its heyday thousands called Ubin home. Today fewer than 50 Singaporeans live here, and nature is very much in control, reason for the government to categorize Ubin as “open space and reserve land” in 2001.

Compared with the glass-clad skyscrapers, air-conditioned shopping malls and rush-hour-traffic-choked roadways of Singapore, Pulau Ubin is a grounding antidote to urban existence. This quality is its attraction, judging by the arrivals — about 2,000 each weekend, and a handful of French families, British backpackers and Singaporean youths looking to temporarily change scenery on weekdays — who come to experience a long-forgotten Singapore.

From Ubin’s jetty, reached by bare-bones wooden vessels called bumboats, and tiny main village, a few paved roads fan out to coastal campsites, dirt paths, lotus ponds or beautiful wetlands. The most striking constant is the lack of noise. Apart from the odd muted roar of a 777 landing in Singapore, sounds are limited to the crowing of red junglefowl, the chirps of the scaly-breasted munias, straw-headed bulbuls, Oriental magpies and collared kingfishers, or the wind rattling candlenut, jambu bol and nipah palm leaves.

But despite the unspoiled character of Pulau Ubin, there are ripples of concern among the holdout residents who doggedly champion the island’s anachronistic lifestyle. In January, the government published “The Population White Paper: A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore,” projecting that the city-state’s populace could hit 6.9 million by 2030 (it is currently 5.3 million), requiring 25 square miles of additional land in a country only three and a half times the size of Washington, D.C., possibly through developing “some of our reserve land.”

Two months later, the island’s householders received a letter from the government’s public housing body, ominously titled “Clearance Scheme: Clearance of Structures Previously Acquired for Development of Adventure Park on Pulau Ubin,” again raising the specter of development. In July the government quashed any rumors, stating, “There is currently no development plan for Pulau Ubin. Our intention is to keep Pulau Ubin in its rustic state for as long as possible, and as an outdoor playground for Singaporeans,” and that the earlier letter was notification of a census survey, not an eviction notice, and “could have been more carefully worded.

For now, Ubin residents believe that the island’s primitive ways are safe, and there are reasons for optimism that green spaces will continue to be valued. Last year Singapore unveiled its “50 Years of Greening” campaign (part of the nation’s vision that it be known as a City in a Garden), and in April Singapore announced its application to Unesco for World Heritage site status for the 154-year-old Botanic Garden. On the day of my visit to Ubin, National Parks Board employees were diligently tagging birds to study their habitats and migratory patterns. (Board statistics also flaunt the island’s biodiversity: 603 species of plant, 207 species of birds, 153 species of butterfly, 39 species of reptile.)

After the restlessness of Singapore, Pulau Ubin’s gentle wilderness is a relief. I biked to Chek Jawa Wetlands on Ubin’s southeast coast, a preserve that incorporates six types of ecosystem (including coral rubble, coastal forest and mangroves, all visible from a boardwalk); it is home to the piercingly vocal oriental pied hornbill, has a Tudor house for a visitors’ center, and a 70-foot viewing tower that once summited, clichés aside, will make a visitor feel like the king of the jungle. Cycling west, I spotted an elderly couple milling around outside their tin-roofed home. Ahmad Benkasim and Sapia Bentitayeb have been married 50 years (Benkasim has lived on the island for all of his 70 years), and their love of Ubin is evident. “Here we have everything, rubber, durian, jackfruit,” Mr. Benkasim said. “In Singapore you have what ... steel? There it is hot and noisy. Here, you have peace, and at night it is cool. We have three children in Singapore, but still like to be here. This is our house.”

Ubin’s parallel universe soon feels normal. On the main island, shade comes courtesy of man-made walkways or the shadows of skyscrapers; here, the abundance of trees ensures shade is ubiquitous. In Singapore, office workers are glued to smartphone screens; here, visitors quickly learn to look in all directions, with visual stimulation from a wild boar muscling through the forests to the side, or a Malayan water monitor slinking into the reeds by the roadside up ahead, or a troupe of long-tail macaques leaping from branch to branch overhead.

Ubin has Singapore’s only off-road mountain biking track, a circuit of gravel trails, rocky hills and flowering meadows. And Puaka Hill, the island’s highest point, provided a vista that I hope to never forget. Below, dark blue waters filled the abandoned Ubin Quarry, the surrounding forests giving it the appearance of a giant sapphire on a bed of emeralds. Singapore’s outline stretched across the horizon. That there was nobody with whom to share the view was reward in itself.

IF YOU GO

How to Get There

Bumboats to Pulau Ubin leave from Changi Point Ferry Terminal when 12 passengers are ready to board, cost 2.50 Singapore dollars (about $2 U.S.) each, or charter the whole boat for 30 dollars. To reach the terminal by public transport, take the MRT East-West subway line to Tanah Merah, then bus No. 2 to Changi Village Bus Terminal (the last stop), right by the ferry terminal. Or take the MRT to Simei and bus No. 9 to the “After Changi Golf Course” stop; from there the terminal is a five-minute walk.

Getting Around

The main village has many bike shops. For about 8 dollars (10 dollars on weekends), I rented a 21-speed Raleigh mountain bike from Comfort Bicycle Rental. Cyclists planning to attack Ketam Mountain Bike Park’s double-black-diamond trails can rent Cannondale and Trek bikes for20 dollars per day.

Dining

A few coffee shops, as they are known in the local vernacular (cafes with some standard dishes), dot the village but the only full-service restaurant is Seasons Live Seafood. It has large plastic tanks filled with crustaceans and fish, and prepares better-than-average renditions of chile crab, Hong Kong steamed fish and drunken prawns. The chilled fresh young coconut is a lifesaver after a day on the bike.

Staying

There are basic campsites on the island (campers have to register at the park kiosk by the Ubin jetty), and the average, overpriced Celelstial Ubin Beach Resort close to the jetty, but Pulau Ubin is perfect as a long day trip.

Related links
More about Pulau Ubin, how to get there and what to see and do on wildsingapore

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Malaysia: A Mahathir Solution To Flooding

Bernama 3 Jan 14;

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 3 (Bernama) -- Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad has suggested that the first floor of buildings and houses be raised in order to prevent floods and reduce damage from the recurring disaster in the future.

He said the first floor - lobby or entrance hall - of a building should be raised to about 12 feet or more above the level of the street or the road, with concrete walls surrounding the space below the first floor extending down to surround the car park below the building.

In the latest post on his blog at www.chedet.cc, Mahathir also said that a ramp must be built from the road to the entrance of the building on the first floor and another ramp for the cars to drive down to the multi-level car park below.

"The road or street will become virtual drains during the floods due to the rain or the tide. This will help the floodwaters to drain quickly into the canals or rivers as soon as the tide goes down or the rain stops," he said.

On the east coast where floods regularly occur during the monsoon rains, Mahathir said, the simplest solution was to go back to building houses on stilts like the old Malay houses.

"The first floor of the houses must be above the highest floodwater mark. The stilts supporting the houses must be sturdy and buried deep in the ground. Concrete should be used," he said.

To avoid cars from 'drowning' during the monsoon season, Mahathir said, a ramp could be built so that the cars could be driven up to the first floor.

He said the government had spent quite a substantial amount of money for flood relief and, by insisting that houses be built on stilts, the money would be saved.

"Part of the savings can be used to subsidise the cost of the stilts, at least initially. The house-owners or occupants too would save money," he said.

Mahathir said that if the idea was to be accepted, architects could design the stilts to look attractive while competitions could also be held for new styles of houses on stilts.

"If we don't do something, every year thousands will have to be evacuated and a few will lose their lives. And lots of money would be wasted on food, evacuation and repairing flood damage," he said.

Last month, Johor, Pahang, Terengganu, Kelantan and Sarawak were hit by floods following incessant heavy rain and the overflow of rivers in several areas, forcing thousands of residents to be relocated and incurring much damage to property.

-- BERNAMA

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Best of our wild blogs: 3 Jan 14

close encounters of the otteriffic kind @ SBWR 02Jan2014
from sgbeachbum

a whole lot of croc (and then some) @ SBWR-02Jan2014
from sgbeachbum

#16 Pasir Ris Park
from My Nature Experiences

Butterflies Galore! : Dark Caerulean
from Butterflies of Singapore

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Higher-than-average rainfall expected this month

Siau Ming En Today Online 3 Jan 13;

SINGAPORE — Expect a wet start to the year, with rainfall for this month likely to be “slightly above average”, according to the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS).

The alert follows above-average rainfall recorded last month, making it one of the wettest Decembers in recent years. The weather service had last year predicted more rain than usual for the north-east monsoon season, which occurs between December and March each year.

Total rainfall recorded at the Changi climate station last month was 348.2mm, about 20 per cent above the long-term average of 287.9mm.

The highest rainfall ever recorded for December was 765.9mm in 2006.

The weather service added that rainfall across the island was “due to the occurrence of localised convective thunderstorms and monsoon rain”.

Northern, central and eastern Singapore recorded above-average rainfall last month, with central areas registering the heaviest rainfall, about 55 to 80 per cent above the long-term average. The MSS also said below-average rainfall was recorded in southern and western Singapore last month. The amount of rain recorded in southern areas was, in fact, 25 to 40 per cent below the long-term average.

But forecasters said Singapore can expect, on average, rainfall conditions that are close to the long-term average in the first six months of the year.

“According to predictions of the majority of models from global research centres, El Nino and La Nina conditions, which influence global and regional year-to-year rainfall variability, are expected to remain neutral for at least the first half of 2014,” said an MSS spokesperson. Siau Ming En

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The U.K.: Plastic waste in the Thames will devastate marine life, report warns

Stream of rubbish flowing into North Sea having disastrous effect on freshwater ecosystem too, study shows
Jessica Aldred theguardian.com 2 Jan 13;

An unseen stream of plastic rubbish flowing along the bed of the river Thames and out into the North Sea will have far-reaching effects on marine life, a new report indicates.

Scientists from the Natural History Museum and Royal Holloway, University of London, collected rubbish over a three-month period at the end of 2012 from seven locations along the river bed of the upper Thames estuary, between Crossness and Broadness Point.

The team netted 8,490 items including plastic cigarette packaging, food wrapping and cups that may have been blown or washed into the river down storm drains. More than 20% of waste was made up of sanitary products such as pads and plastic backing strips, which had most likely been flushed straight down the toilet. The full extent of the unseen waste could be far worse, the study warned, as plastic bags and other large items may have escaped the small nets used in the study.

The two most contaminated sites were in the vicinity of sewage treatment works at Crossness and Littlebrook, the report found, and could indicate that plants were not filtering out larger waste, or were letting sewage overflow when heavy rains created extra waste.

The report said the data represented only a snapshot, and as such it was difficult to estimate the volume of litter that was actually entering the North Sea this way. But scientists said the figures highlighted an underestimated problem.

"This underwater litter must be taken into account when estimating the amount of pollution entering our rivers and seas, not just those items that we can see at the surface and washed up onshore," said Dr Dave Morritt, senior lecturer in marine biology at Royal Holloway, University of London and co-author of Plastic in the Thames: A River Runs Through It, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. "The potential impacts this could have for wildlife are far-reaching: not only are the species that live in and around rivers affected, but also those in seas that rivers feed into."

The team was originally conducting a trial of different types of "fyke nets" – a type of trap anchored to the river bed – that would allow invasive Chinese mitten crabs to be harvested while allowing endangered eels to escape. But they spent so long clearing plastic rubbish from the nets that they thought this alone merited further study.

The report also warned that larger pieces of plastic are being continuously rolled backwards and forwards by the estuary's tidal movements and broken down into smaller and smaller "microplastic" fragments that are easily digested by birds, fish and smaller species such as crabs.

This follows a study in December that highlighted the potential impact on ocean ecosystems when species at the base of the food chain ingest microplastics. Lugworms, starfish, sea cucumbers and fiddler crabs all act as prey for birds and fish, transporting the tiny fragments up the food chain. A second study found evidence that potentially harmful chemicals including hydrocarbons, antimicrobials and flame retardants were leaching from the ingested plastic into the digestive systems of such species.

Dr Paul Clark, a researcher at the Natural History Museum and co-author of the study, said: "Plastic can have a damaging impact on underwater life. Large pieces can trap animals but smaller pieces can be inadvertently eaten. The toxic chemicals they contain, in high doses, could harm the health of wildlife."

The findings are the latest evidence that plastic pollution is having as big an impact on freshwater environments as the seas.

The issue of plastic pollution in the ocean environment – where as much as 80% of litter is plastic – has become more high-profile in recent years, with widely documented instances of fish and bird entanglement, ingestion and suffocation and the growing Great Pacific and North Atlantic garbage patches.

But there has been less attention focused on the issue of plastics flowing down major rivers, with only a handful of prominent studies to date looking at the impact on catchments and watersheds.

In October this year a study published in the journal Current Biology found that lake Garda, one of the famous Italian lakes, contained as many microplastic particles as in marine beach sediments. And in 2012 it was found that plastic pollutants circulate in pockets of America's Great Lakes at concentrations higher than any other body of water on Earth.

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Best of our wild blogs: 2 Jan 14

lone injured otter ? @ off Pulau Buloh - 01Jan2014
from sgbeachbum

New Year Morning Walk At Bukit Batok Nature Park (01 Jan 2014) from Beetles@SG BLOG and Short Afternoon Walk At Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (31 Dec 2013)

Caged civets in Vietnam
from Project LUWAK SG

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