Chek Jawa survey

Again this started with the question, "Can you help with the Chek Jawa survey?" and I figured, no harm in spending a nice Sunday night in Pulau Ubin plodding along the rocky shores. Plus any excuse to go out to the field is totally fine with me.
Looking at the assemblage of volunteers who came for the training workshops; some 60 plus of them, plus a film crew, it was a heartening sight. No doubt this is a tiny bit of land at the tip of a small island perched north of a modestly sized island called Singapore. And yes, some of us groan (myself included) when we hear Chek Jawa being mentioned again. (sometimes it's like listening to a nice song being played too much on radio)
But I realised that, we cannot abandon Chek Jawa like some old CD, for this is a place that still needs our presence after the hype and attention died down. While there are other places which deserve just as much attention; one can hope that, there will be others who are inspired by what has been done at Chek Jawa, and pull off another green miracle.
Heh, I may be rambling, but then if the words above don't make sense, maybe the picture below will. Cheers.



See Chek Jawa Transect 2004 on Habitatnews

Aliens

An exotic species, otherwise known as alien species, is an organism that is not indigenous to an area. It could have been transported there from its natural habitat by humans, human activities or other agents. This act of transportation alters the ecological balance that has been established due to the environmental and climatic barriers limiting the geographical range of the particular species. Examples of environmental barriers are mainly climatic in nature, and in specific terms, oceans, rivers and deserts are some of the various boundaries that restrict the movement of species.

These barriers have long been transcended since the pre-industrial era, when humans migrated with cultivated plants and domesticated animals to establish new farming locations and settlements. For example, land mammals of North America, in nature, are incapable of crossing the Pacific Ocean to get to Hawaii. However, the Polynesians who first reached and inhabited the archipelago introduced a rat species, the domestic dog, the domestic pig, as well as cultivated plants to the area.

Exotic species do not always establish a self-sustaining wild population in the area which they are introduced. This is due to an unsuitable environment in which they cannot naturally thrive, or simply an adverse environmental or climatic condition which renders their survival impossible. However, some of these nonindigenous species do establish self-sustaining wild populations and are hence naturalized. Previously domesticated animals such as the domestic dog that has naturalized are known as feral animals.

Many exotic species can go on to cause harm to the ecosystem, with populations expanding dramatically at the expense of indigenous, or native, species. These undesirable alien organisms are aptly termed as invasive species.

Recycling old batteries - akan datang!

In 2002, Singapore Environment Council (SEC) launched a pilot scheme called Mad about batteries" at Nan Hua Secondary school on 27th July 2002. Alvater Jakob Pte Ltd had agreed to collect the batteries and pass it on to Citiraya Industries Pte Ltd who were to export it to France! This answered the call that many had made like Adrian and Cheng Puay below.

However, this method turned out to be too expensive and Citiraya dicontinued the project. A check with SEC this afternoon confirmed the scheme is no longer in operation. However, they did say that the National Environment Agency (NEA) is scouting for a feasible alternative. Presumably this will be 'economically closer' to Singapore as we have no batteery recycling facility ourselves. They appear to be enthusiastic to see this happen sometime soon.

The Singapore Greeen Plan 2012 by NEA has ben criticised for the weakness of its nature conservation or "green" aspects. In reality, it makes little comment but nature conservation is more directly affected by agencies of the Ministry of National Development, namely the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) and the National Parks Board (NParks). NEA has made considerable progress in brown issues and are hoping to increase all aspects of recycling. For an easy read about the progress and targets, read the Singapore Clean Card.

For now, through Nokia's take back programme, we can at least recycle old handphone batteries for starters. I know I have a few lying around but habe not done anything about it as yet.

Shall we ask the department or faculty before going down? You nver know who else might be grateful if we holler.

Trying to throw my old batteries

I have been trying to get rid of my single use batteries. I know it is a fire hazard to keep them too long at home so I wrap them up and keep in in my bag. It is tempting to throw them in the dustbin but somehow, I just can't bring myself to do it. Before my bag gets set ablaze and I start lugging a ton of batteries to and fro the office, I have decided to find a better way of getting rid of my single use batteries, of which, I have a lot as the children's toys these days don't have windups- a remote control suv with an automatic bubble blower requires 8 AA batteries- someone gave it to my kid. The batteries expired after one evening. I HAVE switched to rechargeables, mind you.

Anyway, in a somewhat rare exercise of eco-friendly effort (not that I am not eco-friendly; but this is quite pro-active lah), I have decided to find out what is the best way to do this in modern Singapore. Let me know promptly if you have a protocol. Haven't found it yet but I found this little movie review on "Wrapped in Green" at the Ecomove-2003 awards website. Read on..

"Wrapped in Green"

Kemig Zhang, China/Japan 2002, 16 mins., documentary
(nominated by Earth Vision, Japan)

A little Chinese boy in the film "Wrapped in Green" says: environmental pollution is not seeing the stars in the sky. Ms Tian Gui Rong is selling batteries in a polluted Chinese provincial town. When she reads in the news paper that a single battery can pollute the amount of drinking water a person needs during his whole life, she decides to do it: she starts to collect the used batteries with her bicycle. Due to a lack of other possibilities, she stores them in her own house. A modern female Sisyphus, who does not only fight against the carelessness of the government, but also against her own family. Her husband threatens to divorce her. Wrapped in Green is as simply told as it is touching. The film shows a battle against ignorance and carelessness towards nature. Ms Ruang is a role model. At the end of the film, we see how little children are throwing old batteries wrapped in paper into Ms Rong's green bucket. A sign of hope."

Wildlife trade in China

I watched a CCTV current affairs programme that featured a case where the wildlife traffickers were nabbed. Yunnan Forestry Police has been trying to arrest a known trafficker Chen Gang for two years, but the wily fox managed to slip away everytime. Wildlife trafficking has become increasingly sophisticated. Criminals conduct their transactions via banks not in cash. In Chen's case, he brings in wildlife like pangolins, bear paws and gall bladders from Burma, Laos and Vietnam via Yunan and then distributes throughout China.

Police finally tracked him down in Kunming City and put him under surveillance to round up the entire network. The process revealed the criminals' modus operandi. Even though pangolins were known to make loud human baby-like cries, they were drugged using tranquiliser injections. They were then packed in layered boxes with ventilation and then shipped to Hunan province by trained. The windows of their hideout were reinforced with metal bars and wire to prevent the pangolins from escaping.

The programme showed that an owl's purchase price was only RMB$1.6 (about S$0.30!), the sale price at coastal provinces is a staggering RMB$1500 (S$300). A bear gall bladder purchased for RMB$700 retails for about RMB$ 2500. Police said that criminal gangs in the Yunan border area traditionally involved in smuggling drugs, cigarettes and alcohol had been turning to wildlife because of the immense profit.

Peace be with you, monkey

Even baboons can learn how to live peacefully. Conciliatory behaviour can be socially transmitted, at least in olive baboons (Sapolsky and Share, 2004) , and macaques (de Waal and Johanowicz, 1993). Moreover, such pacifist behaviour within the troops can be enduring.

The macaque study involved mixing juveniles of 2 species, quarrelsome Rhesus monkeys and another easy-going stumptail monkeys. The stumptail monkeys have a "hold-bottom" ritual whre they hold their opponent's hips as a gesture of reconciliation after fights while the rhesus monkeys rarely make up after a fight. In the mixed groups (dominantly stumptails), the "hold-bottom" ritual became ingrained in the rhesus monkeys, so much so, that even when separated from the stumptails, they showed three times more reconciliation than normally shown by their kind. Where is the love, you may ask?

The oilve baboon (Papio anubis) study in Kenya occurred by happenstance when aggressive males were wiped out by bovine tuberculosis from contaminated meat at the garage dump of a tourist lodge, since refuse eaters were also the more aggressive members of their troops. So the cohort was then made up of less agressive individuals. In a typical baboon troop, new adolescent males join the troops and face the wrath of the highly aggressive dominant males, but for this cohort, the atmosphere was one of a "relaxed" dominance hierarchy and physiological measurements showed less stress among the low-ranking males as well. Compared to other troops, this so-named "Rainforest troop" was less aggressive, more friendly and enjoyed low stress levels.


Refs:

de Waal FBM, Johanowicz DL (1993) Modification of reconciliation behavior through social experience: An experiment with two macaque species. Child Dev 64: 897–908. abstract

Sapolsky RM, Share LJ (2004) A Pacific Culture among Wild Baboons: Its Emergence and Transmission. PLoS Biol 2(4): e106

Further reading
de Waal FB (2004) Peace Lessons from an Unlikely Source. PLoS Biol 2(4): e101