Speech by SMS Desmond Lee at NParks' Community in Nature Bioblitz & Schools' Day Out

Mar 25, 2017

I am happy to see so many of you all here today, especially young people, students, working alongside our experts to document the rich biodiversity – the animals, plants, birds, insects in this park, in Kent Ridge Park. 

Most of you think of a park as a place where you go there, your family goes for a picnic, exercise, run, walk your pet, but today, I hope you see a very different side of our parks. Kent Ridge Park is both a place for recreation and exercise, and family time, but it also has a rich heritage, it is a very historical place. For those of you who study history, World War II history, there is a lot of Singapore heritage here, and also a lot of nature, greenery, and lots of wildlife that make their home in this area. 

I also understand some of you are very tired because you started from midnight. You have been here since midnight documenting and tracking nocturnal species – that means animals that come out at night and sleep in the day time. That really is dedication shown by our environmental groups to Singapore’s biodiversity. 

Community Stewardship in our City in a Garden 

Many big cities – and I’m sure our students travel around the world when you go on holidays, or when your school takes you overseas, you will often see big cities turning up sadly up as concrete jungles. So it is like a jungle except it is all concreate. But thankfully, Singapore did not go that way. We are often described as a “City in a Garden”, and it is not just hyperbole - it is actual fact. We have 2,100 species of plants, 392 bird species, 324 butterfly species and a lot more biodiversity. Of course we have lost a lot in the course of the last century as we develop. But to put these numbers into perspective, we still have five times more butterfly species than the UK, and more bird species than Germany. 

That we have such a rich natural heritage in a small, densely populated city like Singapore, is the result of careful planning and implementation over many many years. Today, whether you are in school or whether you are in the work place, you don’t have to travel very far to explore and experience nature in the city – it’s at your doorstep. Our city is enveloped by a network of nature areas and green spaces. And I hope that in your schools you will find a park, a green area near to you, and make it a part of school life, to go out and experience nature within a city. Even in the Central Business District where many of us work, we can see a variety of trees and enjoy birdsong. 

We want to keep enhancing this. So NParks is doing its best to carry out habitat restoration – that means making the habitats friendly to animals so that they can continue to thrive. It is also doing species recovery – so there are some animal and bird and plant species that are not doing so well or are very endangered, and so NParks together with our volunteers are working to make the species recover again. And of course, conservation research, because in order to succeed in a City in a Garden, we must do research in order to help you in your conservation efforts.

But the Government and our green community cannot do this on its own. Whether this continues will be determined by the deeds of Singaporeans, and indeed by younger Singaporeans in front of us. We need everyone to be custodians and stewards of the natural heritage we have been blessed with. This can be done if a “biophilic ethos”, or an innate love for nature, resides in each and every one of us. 

Community in Nature Citizen Science Programme 

One promising indicator of this biophilic ethos is the response to NParks’ Community in Nature, or CIN, Citizen Science programme. This programme allows all of you to learn more about nature while collecting data that is useful for research. Two years ago, the programme, we started out with just 400 people. Today, we have 1,000 passionate citizen scientists helping us to do this work. 

I must thank all for you here for participating in today’s BioBlitz event. The data that you have collected at Kent Ridge Park will help determine NParks’ habitat enhancement works. For instance, if butterfly populations are declining in certain areas, with your data, NParks can enhance those areas with more plants to attract and support butterfly species. So what you are doing here makes a real difference, and I want you to know that. 

I also encourage you to have fun with your own BioBlitzes, and with the nationwide BioBlitz programme, everyone can look forward to take part in surveys at green spaces near to you. Students and teachers will be able to carry out surveys within your own school grounds or in nearby parks under the Schools’ BioBlitz programme too. 

Beyond BioBlitzes, NParks also organises other Citizen Science biodiversity surveys. For example, we have been monitoring garden birds and butterflies over time at various parks. Unlike a BioBlitz, which is more of a snapshot of the biodiversity at a particular place, the Butterfly Watch and the Garden Bird Watch are conducted twice a year, all throughout Singapore. The data that collected is then used to improve overall park management and guide conservation efforts. 

Now let me talk about what I just said earlier – the Butterfly Watch and the Garden Bird Watch. The Butterfly Watch was the first large-scale survey of butterflies involving the community. Our citizen scientists managed to spot forest-dwelling species not commonly found in urban parks, like the Cornelian and the Narrow Spark. 

Our citizen scientists, during the Garden Bird Watch managed to spot 152 species of birds on our island. They even spotted rare ones like the Spotted Wood Owl in our parks and the critically endangered White-rumped Shama at Pulau Ubin. 

I’m happy to announce that NParks will launch a new Citizen Science programme to track dragonflies. Together with birds and butterflies, dragonflies are especially sensitive to changes in our environment. So finding more species of dragonflies is an indicator of the health of our natural habitats, the cleanliness of our water, and its suitability for wildlife. NParks will be releasing details of the Dragonfly Watch in June, and so join us if you can. But if you can’t join us, you can still contribute to our data gathering and research by using the SGBioAtlas app – there is an app, we hope that you will download it, whenever you’re at a park, if you see any wildlife, just take a picture and upload it to the SGBioAtlas app. Better still, you browse the app, there is a lot of information on it, use it as an opportunity to learn and share with your friends and your classmates. 

Apart from biodiversity surveys, there are many other opportunities for you to get involved. Starting from 20 May, NParks will organise guided tours, tree-planting events, and habitat restoration programmes during Biodiversity Week. From 20 May, we hope the teachers will bring your students and take an active part in Biodiversity Week – it’s a whole week! This year’s focus will be on encouraging all of us – the community, to go out and sensitively explore our neighbourhood green spaces. We will then cap it off with our community-led Festival of Biodiversity, on the 27 and 28 May. So we start on 20 May and we end on 27 and 28 – the high point, the Biodiversity Festival, run by our environmental green groups and many of our schools. 

Living in Harmony with Nature 

Now, living with nature is a wonderful thing. Opportunities to learn from the resilience of nature and the fragility of eco-systems, and their application to our daily lives. But some people understandably have concerns about wildlife near their homes. I believe that we can all find ways to be tolerant and to live and let live, to appreciate from a distance. Living in a biophilic city means learning to live alongside wildlife and understanding what to do when we encounter animals – whether they are released pets or whether they are wildlife that come out from our green spaces. For example, all of us should not feed wildlife, as this will alter their natural diet and habitat. In fact, one of the first booths that I visited, the primary school students taught me ‘don’t feed wild animals’, ‘don’t feed birds’, let them find their own balance, in their own environment. We can also dispose of our litter responsibly and keep our voices down when in our nature reserves so to minimise our impact when enjoying nature. 

NParks will continue with its nature education and outreach programmes, and we will also adopt a scientific approach to managing urban ecologies. But this need your help too. Please join our green community. Spread the word amongst your family, friends and neighbours. Let them know what you’ve seen, take a photo of it and share it on social media, and tell them how important it is to respect and treasure our wildlife, so precious in this city of ours. Together, we can encourage all Singaporeans, regardless of your age, to be stewards and custodians of our City in a Garden and the biodiversity that thrives in it. Together, we can become a truly biophilic city. 

And now, I am very excited to share some of the results of today’s BioBlitz with all of you, and these are the results that have come from you. So let me read what was presented to me by all of you. Today we had 29 researchers and 167 citizen scientists. Total number of species identified by all of you – 246. Some technical details, the highlights of BioBlitz as identified by you. The crested goshawk was seen, nationally critically endangered, a bird of prey that specialises in eating other birds. You also saw the Van Hasselt’s sunbird, which is a forest dependent sunbird, an important pollinator for forest trees – well done! And the last sighting, sometimes we take it for granted in Singapore, but in our region it is beginning to be extremely rare, the straw-headed bulbul. It is globally endangered – so it is not just endangered in Singapore, it is endangered around the world and our region, because of the pet trade where people like to catch the straw-headed bulbul. It doesn’t look very impressive but it’s birdsong is just enticing. So people like to trap it unfortunately, put it in cages, and they think that is helping wildlife. I think better out in the forest where you can hear the straw-headed bulbul on Pulau Ubin and also now in Kent Ridge. 

So congratulations to all of you, well done and keep it up. Thank you!