Opening remarks by Minister Desmond Lee at the JGIS ConservAction Conference 2021
Nov 15, 2021
A very good evening to all of you, and thank you for inviting me to the 2021 ConservAction Conference.
Warmest greetings to Dr Jane Goodall – it’s very nice to see you again. I’ve had the privilege of hosting Dr Goodall here in Singapore several times over the last few years, in 2015, 2017 and most recently in 2019 for the first JGIS conference on human-wildlife co-existence in the region. While we can’t meet in person this time due to the pandemic, I’m glad we can still catch up virtually today.
I’d also like to thank the team at JGIS, as well as Johnson & Johnson, for organising this year’s Conference, to continue our conversation on living in harmony with nature, as we transform Singapore into a City in Nature.
City in Nature
As a small city-state, and one of the very few city-states in the modern world, Singapore faces intense land-use challenges, as we strive to balance the many needs of a country, entirely within the limits of our city.
A lot of things that a country would normally put far outside its cities, will – in the case of Singapore – need to be accommodated within our city. For example, airports, seaports, reservoirs, waste management facilities, and so on.
What this means is that our approach to nature conservation for a city-state must be different from that of other larger countries. Much larger countries can preserve large tracts of nature, untouched by development, far away from their cities. Their concern is how to manage urban sprawl, so that their cities don’t expand too much that they encroach into nature and natural spaces.
But for those of you who have been to Singapore – and I know there are many friends from around the world tuning in – we don’t have vast natural hinterlands outside the city, because the city is the country. Instead, we strive to become a City in Nature, by weaving nature right into our urban fabric, so that nature thrives within our city.
For instance, some of our core nature areas, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and Central Catchment Nature Reserve, which comprise primary and secondary rainforest, are nestled right in the heart of our city. We are probably one of only two major cities in the world with a contiguous primary rainforest within the city – the other being Rio de Janeiro.
And within a half-an-hour drive of the rainforest are other key eco-systems – to the north, the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve with mangrove and mudflats, and to the south, the Labrador Nature Reserve with rocky shores.
We’re enhancing the ecological connectivity between these core nature areas, by growing green veins right through our city, so that flora and fauna can thrive across our island.
We’re adding more nature parks, especially at the fringe of our core nature areas, as ecological buffers. In some cases, we’ve done this by retaining our green spaces that were intended to be developed for other purposes, such as Dairy Farm Nature Park and Rifle Range Nature Park. These spaces were supposed to be used for housing.
We’re expanding our park connector network significantly. We’re intensifying the greenery along our roads into what we call “Nature Ways” – we plant different types of shrubs and trees to mimic the structure of a natural forest, so that some animals like birds and butterflies can use these as connectors between green spaces.
And we’ve turned some canals into naturalised rivers and streams, like at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park and Jurong Lake Gardens, to create a beautiful environment that both people and wildlife can enjoy.
These are all part of our City in Nature efforts. It’s how we try to pursue sustainable development, and steward judiciously our scarce land resources – particularly land, so that we can meet both the growing and evolving needs of our people and their aspirations, and also protect our core nature and biodiversity for future generations.
Science-Based Approach to Wildlife Management
Living so close to nature is a privilege, but it also comes with important responsibilities – because it means we’ll encounter wildlife more frequently within the city in our day to day lives, and we’ll have to learn to manage these interactions well and minimise conflicts.
This doesn’t always come naturally for us city dwellers, and from time to time, there have been run-ins with wildlife – and we see these on social media – wildlife like otters, long-tailed macaques, crocodiles, hornbills and wild boars.
We take a community and science-based approach to wildlife management. Science helps us to better understand wildlife behaviour, and to design more targeted and effective interventions to protect our wildlife.
For example, we have dedicated habitat enhancement and species recovery programmes, to better conserve our native species.
We have seen some successes from our conservation efforts. For example, the Singapore Kopsia (Kopsia singapurensis) is a critically endangered plant, which fragrant red and white flowers bear the same colours as our national flag. It was previously only found in Singapore at the Nee Soon Swamp Forest, a very precious habitat. We’ve propagated and planted it in many of our parks and nature reserves, under our species recovery programme.
Similarly, for the critically endangered Singapore Freshwater Crab (Johora singaporensis), we studied its habitat preferences to better understand the specific conditions they thrive in, and managed to successfully breed the species in our laboratories. As of this year, more than 100 individuals have been released into the wild, with a new crab population established in Bukit Batok.
And there are many other species that have become less threatened over time in our city – such as the Sunda Slow Loris and the Lesser Mousedeer, which our latest studies suggest are no longer critically endangered – but we have to keep watch, and keep acting to protect them.
We will press on with this important work. This year, we increased the number of flora and fauna species for our recovery efforts, from 46 in 2016, to 120 species today. By 2030, we aim to increase this to 160 species – and to do this, MND and NParks, as well as academics, researchers, nature groups like JGIS, Nature Society Singapore and many other partners, local communities and infrastructure agencies – have to be brought together to work together collectively on each and every one of these flora and fauna species.
In taking care of our wildlife, we also strive to make good use of new technology and sensitive infrastructure design. For example, at the previous JGIS conference, I shared about our pilot project of the Roadway Animal Detection System (or RADS) and the Advance Warning Signs at Old Upper Thomson Road – and this road is very near forested areas like our Reserve.
RADS uses machine learning and a specialised detection system to spot wildlife approaching the road. The Advance Warning Signs then alert motorists to slow down through a flashing sign. This, coupled with rope bridges and culverts, helps to make road crossings safer for wildlife at the Old Upper Thomson Road, including critically endangered ones such as the Raffles’ Banded Langur.
We’ve found the system to be effective in detecting animals, with an accuracy rate of close to 100%, and it has supported our efforts to reduce roadkill. So we will extend the use of the RADS and the Advanced Warning Signs to Rifle Range Road, which lies between the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, and our upcoming Rifle Range Nature Park.
We will begin developing this in the first half of 2022. This will allow us to assess the effectiveness of the system for different road conditions.
Rope bridges and culverts will also be installed at the nature park, to provide safe crossings for our wildlife – including the critically endangered Sunda Pangolin, as well as the Leopard Cat.
Community Partnership and Engagement
We will also continue to work closely with community partners, government agencies, and nature groups like JGIS, to raise public awareness on how we can live in harmony with native wildlife in our city.
For instance, two years ago, JGIS launched the “No Feeding” campaign, together with NParks and other partners of the Long-tailed Macaque Working Group. The campaign discourages people from feeding macaques, so that the macaques will not search for food in our urban spaces and residential areas. This reduces the chances of human-wildlife conflict.
The campaign has since reached out to over 24,000 people, through over 150 outreach and education activities for residences and schools. At the same time, over 1,200 monkey-proof bins have been installed island-wide, to deter macaques from scouring in them for food. I thank the team for your hard work and collaboration on this!
I am happy to share that we will soon embark on two new studies with our partners such as JGIS, to gather insights on our public’s perceptions of wildlife.
The first is a survey by JGIS on people’s perceptions of our primate and macaque management measures, such as monkey guarding. The second is a broader and more in-depth study that NParks will conduct with the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at SUTD, on public perceptions of wildlife in Singapore.
These findings can help to shape our wildlife management strategies, to promote greater harmony between people and wildlife. We aim to start engaging the public early next year, and will share more details when ready.
Conclusion
To conclude, we are pushing on many fronts to transform Singapore into a City in Nature. And we continue to partner the domestic and international community, to further strengthen our nature and wildlife conservation efforts. For instance, we recently endorsed the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use at COP26.
And we’ve also committed to combatting illegal wildlife trade. We work very closely with our international partners on tackling illegal wildlife trade and in the last two years, our efforts have helped with the seizures of two of the world’s largest ivory and pangolin scales shipments in recent years – and these were headed for Vietnam from Africa.
In addition, we just launched public consultations on strengthening our laws to tackle illegal wildlife trade and most recently we launched our Centre for Wildlife Forensics, seeking to be the first in Southeast Asia to be CITES-certified. We have in addition launched our very first illegal wildlife trade K9 unit to further strengthen our ability to detect illegal wildlife and wildlife parts passing through our transhipment hub.
We need everyone to play a part in achieving our City in Nature ambition. If you are interested to get involved, do join us for our citizen science programmes, biodiversity conservation surveys, and other wildlife-related initiatives, under NParks’ Community in Nature programme. Just use the QR codes and we’ll be in touch.
Or explore the wide range of projects that JGIS offers. And certainly coming up very soon is the Nature Society Singapore’s Bird Race which is held annually and also helps us to look at the number of species of native birdlife that are in Singapore – we are already in wildlife migratory season.
Thank you.