Speech by Minister Desmond Lee at the Festival of Biodiversity.
May 21, 2022
A very good morning to everyone. We are delighted to be able to host Minister Chan Chun Sing today as our Guest of Honour. Thank you also to all our distinguished guests for joining us.
Every year, we hold the Festival of Biodiversity to celebrate our rich natural heritage. This marks the 11th edition of the Festival, and with the most extensive slate of in-person activities, since the start of the pandemic.
I would like to thank our partners from the Biodiversity Roundtable and our passionate volunteers, as well as our teachers and students, for their strong support and effort – not just for this event, but for working with us on our broader nature conservation efforts over the years. Because even though we’re a small city state, we are home to an amazing variety of biodiversity.
Unlike many other cities, we have diverse key habitats, all within less than an hour’s drive from each other: Our core nature areas, such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve and the Central Catchment Nature Reserve, which comprise primary and secondary rainforest, are in the centre of our city, the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and its mangrove and mudflats are to the north, and the Labrador Nature Reserve with its rocky shores, to the south.
It is our duty to steward and take good care of this rich natural heritage for our future generations.
But as a small city-state – only 728 sq km in size – we face immense pressures on our limited land. We need to fit everything that a country needs – including our defence capabilities, ports and airports, schools, healthcare facilities, reservoirs and more – within our city limits. So we must carefully balance our developmental needs with nature conservation.
This is why we aim to become a City in Nature, by weaving nature more deliberately and intensely into our urban fabric, so that nature thrives within our city.
Today, I’d like to share a bit more about how we plan to achieve this. How we’re working with our partners to better conserve our native habitats and species. And how we’re reaching out to Singaporeans, to join us in our greening journey.
Enhancing Our Biodiversity Conservation Efforts
We take comprehensive efforts to conserve nature, under our Nature Conservation Masterplan.
To do this, we’re enhancing the ecological connectivity between our core nature areas, so that flora can disperse and fauna can traverse our island. We’re adding more nature parks, especially at the fringe of our core nature areas, as ecological buffers. However, sometimes, this could mean that we need to take land away from other planned uses. For example, two of our nature parks – the Dairy Farm Nature Park and Rifle Range Nature Park – were initially on land intended for housing. But after careful study, we decided to retain them as green spaces, because of their ecological value.
We’re also actively restoring and enhancing our habitats within key nature areas. Under our Forest Restoration Action Plan, we work closely with our partners in the nature community to restore the greenery in our core nature areas. This is done carefully and deliberately – by choosing the right species of trees, and planting them in strategic locations, to enhance the conservation of these sites. Over the years, NParks has steadily carried out restoration and enhancement efforts at various green spaces – such as the Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserves, Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve, Pulau Ubin, and nature parks across Singapore.
We carry out these efforts using science and data, with the support of the nature community.
As part of these efforts, we continuously strengthen our research capabilities and partnerships, so that we can restore and enhance our key ecosystems for future generations. Last year, we launched the Ecological Profiling Exercise, or EPE, in partnership with experts and members from the nature community. Based on its findings, we will be creating more ecological corridors between our core nature areas, to strengthen the connectivity between these spaces.
We also launched the Tropical Forest Ecology Research programme last April, which brings together experts from Singapore and the region to develop science-based strategies for forest restoration.
Today, I am happy to share that we will conduct a long-term forest monitoring survey of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve under this research programme. This will be the most extensive survey of its kind in Singapore. The Central Catchment Nature Reserve is one of our most precious biodiversity sites, and contains habitats such as giant forest trees and freshwater swamps, as well as endangered species such as the Sunda Pangolin.
As part of the survey, we will revisit and re-establish our data at around 60 forest plots within the nature reserve, marked out by the late Mr. Wong Yew Kwan, Singapore’s first Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, in 1992.The information gathered will allow us to better understand how the forests within the nature reserve have grown and evolved over the past 30 years. This will help us to develop better conservation strategies to ensure that their ecosystems remain healthy and resilient. We will share more details of our findings when they are ready.
We are also updating our knowledge on our important native species, to better conserve them. Today, we are launching a new book
“Flora of Singapore: Checklist and bibliography”, which features key contributions from our NParks researchers, as well as over 120 partners from around 20 different countries. This publication builds on over 200 years of plant-based research in Singapore, and documents all of Singapore’s wild plants, including native and threatened species. This will help us better understand our native flora species and how we can better conserve them.
It will also support various botanical research efforts in Singapore. I would like to thank and congratulate our NParks colleagues, who have worked tirelessly for the past five years on this project, along with their partners around the world.
Promoting Human-Wildlife Co-existence
As we conserve our biodiversity, we must also learn to better co-exist with nature. This is also part of what it means to be a City in Nature. From time to time, there have been run-ins with wildlife like otters, long-tailed macaques, crocodiles, hornbills and wild boars – some of you here may have experienced this too. Most times, these encounters are pleasant, such as when we spot a rare migratory bird. But sometimes, we may also face trickier situations, such as when animals wander into our homes. We will have to manage these encounters carefully.
To achieve this, we take a science- and community-based approach to wildlife management. As part of this approach, we will intensify our outreach efforts to involve members of the community in our wildlife management strategies, and support them to drive their own initiatives.
For example, I recently met with the Nature Kakis – a group of nature stewards that was just formed in Boon Lay. This passionate group organises nature-related programmes such as webinars and nature trips, for Boon Lay residents to enjoy nature and appreciate our biodiversity. The Nature Kakis is just one example of the community groups that we hope to support as we become a City in Nature. The group aims to expand across the heartlands in the West, and in time, form a network of Nature Kakis all across Singapore.
Community Stewardship and Engagement
We will also continue to work together with our community partners, to push ahead with our conservation efforts. Over the years, we’ve seen a growing interest in safeguarding our natural heritage among many Singaporeans.
Today, NParks works closely with over 56,000 volunteers. We are glad that many Singaporeans are so passionate about nature, and we hope to grow this number to some 70,000 over the next few years. Many of these volunteers actively participate in our citizen science programmes, under the Community in Nature initiative.
In fact, just last month, over 230 citizen scientists helped us to gather data on our native flora and fauna, through biodiversity surveys, and also contributed to our habitat enhancement works across Singapore. Just this morning, I also met a team of volunteers from the nature community at Changi Beach Park. More and more Singaporeans like to explore the biodiversity at these intertidal zones, when the tide is low. But they may not know how best to do so, without damaging the ecosystems there. So our volunteers are going around, to reach out to the public and show them how they can appreciate our marine habitats and biodiversity, in a safe and responsible way.
NParks also recently collaborated with ButterflyCircle founder Mr Khew Sin Khoon to produce a pictorial guide – Butterflies of Singapore – featuring 180 species of butterflies that can be encountered in our green spaces.
We are very encouraged by these developments, and we hope that even more people will step forward and join us in our journey to transform Singapore into a City in Nature.
If you are interested to find out more about our local biodiversity, and how you can get involved in our conservation efforts, do participate in the Festival’s events. We have a series of in-person activities, such as biodiversity surveys, art and craft workshops, and mangrove tours for everyone to enjoy. We have also planned a suite of online activities, such as storytelling workshops and webinars, on Singapore’s rich biodiversity, so that our families and young children can join us virtually, if you cannot make it in person. Beyond the Festival, there are also lots of other ways to get involved – just log onto the NParks website, or write to us any time.
I wish you all a wonderful Festival of Biodiversity. Thank you.