Speech by 2M Desmond Lee at the Festival of Biodiversity
May 27, 2017
Good morning. I’m very happy to join all of you at sixth edition of the Festival of Biodiversity, fondly known as FOB. This is the fourth year I’ve had the opportunity to host FOB, and we’re very glad to have Minister Grace Fu with us this year as our Guest of Honour. Thank you for taking time to support this celebration of Singapore’s natural heritage. We also warmly welcome our friends from Youth Corps Singapore who are joining us this morning.
Let me begin by thanking the members of the Biodiversity Roundtable and our partners for your effort to put up this year’s event. New to this year’s Festival, we have a beautiful nature art exhibition and also some public talks on conservation at the Serangoon Public Library just upstairs.
Increased Participation
Today’s Festival caps off an entire week, known as NParks’ Biodiversity Week. In the last few days, we’ve had a wide range of biodiversity programmes across our parks, community gardens and our schools. Just last Sunday, I joined a team of enthusiastic citizen scientists who carried out a biodiversity survey of birds and butterflies at Jurong Lake Gardens. It poured in the middle of the survey, but the scientists put on ponchos, took out their umbrellas and carried on. We call such surveys “Bioblitzes”.
I’ve been told that in the last week, nearly 3,000 citizen scientists have taken part in similar events across Singapore, and it was truly a nation-wide BioBlitz. We even had Singapore’s first marine BioBlitz at the Sisters’ Islands Marine Park, or SIMP. It was during this event I’m told that coral biologist and volunteer, Assistant Professor Huang Danwei from NUS, found a hard coral species – Favites vasta, that is a new record for Singapore! It is very encouraging to know that so many of you came together to help us survey our flora and fauna. The data that you have collected through the BioBlitzes will help us understand our native biodiversity better and to guide conservation efforts.
Beyond Bioblitzes, some citizen scientists also helped plant biodiversity-attracting trees and plants in our parks. This was another first, as such habitat enhancement works are usually carried out by NParks. I’m happy that the community is now playing a more active and bigger role in conservation. All in all, we expect around 35,000 participants for this year’s Biodiversity Week events by the end of this Festival tomorrow. That is a 60% increase from last year and I hope we keep up this momentum in building awareness amongst Singaporeans.
Discovering Our Rich Biodiversity
It’s important to do this as I believe that many more people will become passionate about our biodiversity once they are aware of the natural treasures around us. Just take a look at the displays here and in the tent next door, fascinating displays of our native wildlife. Despite being small and highly urbanised, we have been blessed with a wealth of biodiversity as a City in a Garden. We have almost 400 bird species, more than 250 orthopteran insect species, which includes grasshoppers, crickets, locusts – and some of young scientists have named orthopterans after their friends and after Singapore, and we have more than 2,000 species of native plants on our island.
This list is likely to grow, as more effort is put into enhancing, restoring and exploring our natural areas. In the past five years, NParks and our research partners have discovered as well as rediscovered some 500 species in Singapore. These include both marine and terrestrial animals, as well as plants, orchids, and insects.
One example is a species of bee that is potentially new to science! A small carpenter bee was found visiting tiger orchids in bloom at the edge of a secondary rainforest in 2014. Researchers from NParks and NUS are jointly publishing a paper on this new discovery. They’ve given a name, Ceratina sayang, sayang because of the heart-shaped patch on its back. Discovered by Singapore researchers and NParks officers.
Continual Conservation Efforts
While we marvel at our rich biodiversity, we cannot take it for granted. Conservation requires a long-term effort. That is why, in 2015, NParks introduced the Nature Conservation Masterplan as a commitment to strengthen our conservation efforts in areas of habitat enhancement, restoration, and species recovery.
We’ve had some success thus far. So take for example the Johora singaporensis, which is the Singapore Freshwater Crab. This crab can only be found in Singapore and nowhere else, it is critically endangered, in fact, on the brink of extinction. As part of our species recovery efforts, some of these crabs were introduced to a stream in Bukit Batok, where they have never been seen at before. I am happy to share that now we have baby crabs appearing in Bukit Batok – a good effort! This indicates that the crabs, the Johora singaporensis, are successfully breeding at this new site. So there is yet hope.
And we are not stopping there. This year, we will step up our recovery efforts for an additional 48 animal and plant species which are nationally threatened. These include the Cinnamon Bush Frog, the Sunda Leaf Fish, and the Climbing Pandan
We will also continue expanding and enhancing natural habitats. On this note, I am happy to announce that we will be starting work on a new park connector along Old Upper Thomson Road. This park connector will feature enhanced plantings to provide more food and shelter, and a safer passage for animals crossing between the Nature Reserve and Thomson Nature Park, and of course it will also benefit park users. We aim to complete the park connector by the time we open Thomson Nature Park next year, so that the public can safely walk and cycle to the park and other nearby nature areas.
Growing Community Stewardship
With sustained effort, our biodiversity can thrive amidst our very busy and urban city. But let me say that much of what we have achieved would not have been possible without support and participation of our green community.
I’m particularly proud of the various community working groups that focus on key native species. These groups are driven by community volunteers, comprising NGOs, research institutions, citizen scientists and government agencies. Members pouring their time, their expertise and more importantly their heart, to study, to monitor and to conserve endangered native wildlife.
For instance, in May last year, the Otter Working Group helped in the rescue and return of an otter cub named Toby. Toby had been left behind by his parents in their old otter holt and was in danger of drowning. He was in a weakened state when rescued, but with the intervention of the Otter Working Group members, Toby was nursed back to health and reunited with his family within two weeks. Just follow the otter man’s Facebook page and you will see the life and times of Toby.
This is a heartwarming story. But it is also an excellent example of what can be achieved when the community comes together and takes ownership. Besides the Otter Working Group, we also have working groups for the Raffles’ banded langur, and the Sunda Pangolin, just to name a few.
Conclusion
Looking ahead, we will need even more community support. It is inevitable that there will be more human-wildlife encounters, even human-wildlife conflict, as our conservation efforts bear fruit in the heart of our city. So in the years to come, we will need even more dedicated individuals to educate the public on our native biodiversity, develop innovative solutions to manage human-wildlife issues, and help out in research that will help us better develop programmes and policies.
Every little bit of help counts, whether you participate in a working group, volunteer with NParks, or simply invite your friends and family to events like today’s Festival of Biodiversity. We hope that more people in Singapore will step forward and participate in our movement to make Singapore a truly biophilic City in a Garden.
Thank you all, and I wish you all a fruitful Festival of Biodiversity. Thank you.