Malaysia: Dengue cases at an all-time high

LOH FOON FONG The Star 10 Aug 19;

KUALA LUMPUR: Dengue fever cases in Malaysia reached an all time high, hitting nearly 80, 000 cases and 113 deaths reported from January until Aug 3.

Deputy Health Minister Lee Boon Chye expects the number to hit 150, 000 cases by year end if all out efforts are not taken to keep it under control.

The last highest number of cases recorded was in 2015 which recorded 120, 836 cases with 336 deaths.

The figures between January and Aug 3 is almost double that of last year’s figures for the same period – 42, 496 cases with 70 deaths.

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Malaysia: Elephants feeding on Orang Asli crops

SIRA HABIBU The Star 9 Aug 19;

PETALING JAYA: Rampaging elephants are destroying Orang Asli community farms in Pos Simpor near Gua Musang, Kelantan, sparking fears of famine during the coming rainy season.

Villagers in Kampung Jader, Kampung Penad and Kampung Ceranok claimed that logging and land-clearing activities in the Balah Forest Reserve had forced the elephants out of their normal habitat, leaving them to forage for food in villages.

Jaringan Kampung Orang Asli Wilayah Tanah Adat Pos Simpor chairman Nur Mohd Syafiq Dendi Abdullah said the elephants had been destroying the community’s self-sustainable farms since July.“Our tapioca, pumpkin, corn and banana plants have been destroyed, affecting over 200 people from 48 households here.

“We fear the worst during the rainy season as it will be difficult for us to go to town in Gua Musang to get our grocery supplies.“We have always relied on our own food crops, especially during the rainy season when the towns are flooded and we are locked down in the jungle, ” he added.

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Malaysia: Damaged reefs in marine park off KK are recovering

Avila Geraldine New Straits Times 9 Aug 19;

KOTA KINABALU: Damaged reefs within the protected marine park off the state capital are regenerating.

A large flat reef at the Midreef diving point near Pulau Manukan Island, in particular, has seen new coral growth aided by artificial reefs. This was after the area’s corals were wiped out by Tropical Storm Greg in 1996.

Manukan is one of the five islands in Tunku Abdul Rahman Park (TARP), a protected marine area. The other islands are Sapi, Mamutik, Sulug and Gaya.

Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) reef ecologist Dr Zarinah Waheed said Sabah Parks had initiated reef restoration work by placing artificial reef balls in some of the damaged areas.

She said this established solid substrate for new corals to migrate and attach themselves.

“The problem with damaged reef is that, when coral or any hard limestone structures are destroyed, it will become small loose pieces and these move with the water current.

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WWF-Malaysia tells Sabah to rethink mining proposal on Tun Mustapha Park

Roy Goh New Straits Times 8 Aug 19;

KOTA KINABALU: A silica sand mining proposal on an island off the northern district of Kudat concerns the World Wildlife Fund-Malaysia.

The mining was proposed on Pulau Balambangan which is located within the 900,000ha Tun Mustapha Park, the largest marine park in the country. There are also some 50 islands within the park.

Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal announced this during the State Legislative Assembly sitting, which ended on Wednesday.

In response to this, WWF-Malaysia Conservation director Dr Henry Chan urged the state government to turn down the silica sand mining proposasl.

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Indonesia: Riau Police name palm oil corporation as forest fire suspect

Rizal Harahap The Jakarta Post 10 Aug 19;

The Riau Police on Friday named palm oil company PT Sumber Sawit Sejahtera as the suspect in a forest fire in Pelalawan regency, Riau.

The corporation is alleged to be responsible for causing a fire on a 150-hectare field in Meranti district, Pelalawan.

Riau Police chief Insp. Gen. Widodo Eko Prihastopo said the police decided to name the company the suspect after gathering enough evidence and statements from expert witnesses.

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Plant-based diet can fight climate change - UN

Roger Harrabin BBC 8 auG 19;

Switching to a plant-based diet can help fight climate change, UN experts have said.

A major report on land use and climate change says the West's high consumption of meat and dairy produce is fuelling global warming.

But scientists and officials stopped short of explicitly calling on everyone to become vegan or vegetarian.

They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat.

The document, prepared by 107 scientists for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says that if land is used more effectively, it can store more of the carbon emitted by humans.

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Best of our wild blogs: 8 Aug 19

Living reefs at East Coast Park
wild shores of singapore

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Want to do more to fight climate change? Cut down on driving, buying stuff and eating meat

Aqil Haziq Mahmud Channel NewsAsia 8 Aug 19;

SINGAPORE: In the battle against climate change, environment experts have urged individuals to look beyond single-use plastic and make bigger changes in their daily lives: Drive and fly less, and change what they eat and buy.

"Most of the individual actions people can do are often less visible than not using straws, and requires an effort to change behaviour for the long term," Associate Professor Winston Chow of the Singapore Management University (SMU) told CNA on Wednesday (Aug 7).
"Some steps would be to reduce consumption of goods, materials and services that generate carbon emissions."

A Mediacorp survey released on Wednesday showed that more than nine in 10 Singaporeans and permanent residents agreed that they would do their part to "minimise the impact" of climate change.

But what exactly should they do?

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Singaporeans want to go green but need to learn how to recycle properly, survey finds

TESSA OH Today Online 8 Aug 19;

SINGAPORE — Singaporeans are generally quite proactive in taking steps towards a more sustainable way of living but more education is needed to teach people how to recycle properly, a recent online straw poll has found.

The online survey, which polled 100 people aged 16 and above between July 5 and 22, was conducted by Black Dot Research, a Singapore-based market and social research agency.

It found that while Singaporeans try to recycle using the blue bins located in housing estates, close to a third of respondents believed that plastic drinking straws, used paper cups and used plastic cutlery can be placed in the bins when they are in fact not recyclable.

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The link between durian and climate change

Audrey Tan Straits Times 8 Aug 19;

SINGAPORE - Global hunger for staples like rice is fuelling the release of planet-warming emissions, a new scientific report released on Thursday (Aug 8) shows.

Closer to home, the growing appetite for other delicacies is also contributing to climate change, with forests in places like Malaysia being cleared to make way for Musang King durian plantations.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) special report on climate change and land shines the spotlight on how the way humans have been using land is affecting the planet.

Agriculture is a major focus of the report authored by 103 scientists from 52 countries.

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Singapore lauds Indonesia's forest fire control efforts

Antara 7 Aug 19;

Batam, Riau Islands (ANTARA) - The Indonesian government's efforts to combat land and forest fires have received appreciation at the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states in Brunei Darussalam to discuss transboundary haze pollution. "We concluded the meeting only last night. During the two-day session no participant (complained about) transboundary (haze pollution) from Indonesia. We explained our concrete efforts in the field but we must admit that it is very difficult to put out peatland fires," Director of Land and Forest Fire Control of the Environment and Forestry Ministry Raffles B Panjaitan said in a written statement released Wednesday.

"I met with Singapore Minister of Environment and Water Sources Masagos Zulkifli. He thanked the Indonesian government for its efforts to handle land and forest fires and sent best regards to Minister Siti Nurbaya," he said.

The integrated land and forest fire control task force comprising personnel from the military, police, national and regional disaster mitigation agencies, village heads, firefighters, fire brigades of national parks, natural resource and ecosystem conservation agency have continued their efforts to control fires arising from vulnerable areas, Raffles said.

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Malaysia: Hot and dry weather until October, says the weatherman

The Star 8 Aug 19;

KUALA LUMPUR (Bernama): Malaysia is expected to experience hot and dry weather with less rainfall until October, says Deputy Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis.

She said apart from Malaysia, neighbouring countries Singapore and Sumatra in Indonesia are expected to experience the same weather pattern.

"We expect to experience a shortage of rainfall with warmer and drier weather this year without the El Nino and La Nina phenomena until October, " she said when asked about the essence of the 21st Technical Working Group (TWG) Meeting and the Ministerial Steering Committee Sub-Region on Cross-border Haze Pollution in Brunei.

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