Singapore’s Natural Heritage

Considering that today is Blog Action Day, I’ve decided to take a quick break from work, and to start taking things a little more seriously. After all, I’ve had this blog planned since May, but due to slothfulness, procrastination, and a busy schedule, I’ve been putting a lot of things on hold. My original plan was to blog about the numerous experiences I’ve had recently, working to uncover and reveal the beauty of Singapore’s natural heritage. But since today is Blog Action Day, I might as well start off by writing down some of my thoughts on Singapore and the environment. Bear with me, for this post is long, and there aren’t any photos. But it’s the best I can come up with for now.

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Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
– Rachel Carson

Something happened the other day, that got me thinking. I was waiting at the bus stop outside my block, when out of the corner of my eye, there was a streak of bright yellow. I’ve come to associate that telltale streak as the flight of one of the most colourful birds around, the Black-naped Oriole. And indeed, there was an oriole perched in a small palm planted beside the bus stop. Yet, even while I observed it, I became all too aware that no one else seemed to have noticed. The bus stop was crowded with people, but it appeared that nobody else had seen the oriole. Yet here it was, a relatively large and bold, bright yellow bird, barely 5 metres away from the bus stop shelter, and nobody else even batted an eyelid, or turned to look. Everyone else remained deeply engrossed in their conversations, staring at their mobile phones, eye-balling the passing traffic.

That was when the painful realisation dawned on me. How many Singaporeans really know their environment, and the myriad other organisms which live alongside us? How many Singaporeans have gone about their lives without ever noticing the unmistakable flash of blue as a Collared Kingfisher swoops down to the ground and snatches a grasshopper? How many of us walk by, completely oblivious to the Common Sun Skink basking beside the pavement? How many times have we walked unknowingly alongside drains teeming with hundreds of tadpoles of the Asian Toad? How many times have we remained trapped in our own little bubbles, while the bus or train passes over a monsoon drain or canal dotted with the poised elegance of Little Egrets and Grey Herons stalking fish in the shallows?

It depresses me when I think of all the times I’ve seen the throngs of people rushing about, while visible above the trees and buildings, a Brahminy Kite or White-bellied Sea Eagle soars effortlessly. Yet not a head is raised, not a single person pauses for a moment to marvel in awe.

Nearly all of us would be familiar with the maddeningly repetitive cry of the Asian Koel. But if you took an audio recording of its call, and then polled Singaporeans on the street, how many Singaporeans would be able to correctly identify the bird?

We’ve all been taught to protect the environment, indoctrinated to do our part to preserve what we’ve got for the sake of future generations. We’ve all grown up with Clean and Green Week, with Captain Planet (for those of us who were old enough to remember), and with frequent and constant reminders not to litter. But how many of us truly actually take the message to heart, and realise that we all live in an interconnected community, a landscape where our actions can have consequences all over the globe? How can we truly love and protect what we have when we remain so blind to the marvellous beauty that is all around us?

I remember my days in NUS very vividly, and in particular, I will always remember the wonderful sights and sounds of the wildlife which lived in and amongst the buildings. I remember the AS1 corridor, with the Yellow-vented Bulbuls which fed on the fruits of the palms that grew along the corridor, the Common Tailorbird family that flitted amongst the bushes, and the Oriental Magpie-Robins that would ever so often hop out from the thick vegetation and forage for insects. Then there were the Plantain Squirrels which inhabited the trees outside the Engineering Canteen, and the bats that flew around the lampposts at night, hunting the insects that were drawn to the light. On more than one occasion, I saw bats that based on size, were most likely the Lesser Dog-faced Fruit Bat. The wooded area between AS1 and Kent Ridge Crescent was home to what I believe to be a Spotted Wood Owl, and people who stayed in the evenings in the Geography Honours Room were sure to hear its strange, eerie whoops. And then there were my friends who were fortunate enough to have spotted on occasion the many Paradise Tree Snakes that called the area around the faculty home.

How many people have passed through these same corridors and walkways, and yet remained completely oblivious and ignorant to the presence of these creatures?

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It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.
– Rachel Carson

Walking along the beach has always been a favourite pastime for me. I recall one occasion when my dad brought me to a spot along Changi Beach, where the crowd that had gathered was treated to flybys of military aircraft. Yet instead of staring up at the sky and marveling at the ingenuity of human engineering, I spent most of the time with my head bowed, scanning the ground for traces of the lives beneath the waves. The empty test of a sea urchin. The internal shell of a cuttlefish. The old, cast-off moults of crabs. Empty shells of clams and snails. To me, these held far more fascination than the giant fuel-guzzling metal birds above.

Even as I’ve grown older, I’ve never lost this fascination with walking along the beach, patrolling the strand line for random signs of life. Though most of what I find is long dead, it is a sign of the bounty that somehow still manages to cling on to existence against all odds. At Changi, the dead fish scattered about on the beach, and those live ones hanging about the jetties, are a testament to the shoals which still survive in our polluted waters, ranging from Spotted Scat and Banded Archerfish, Striped-nose Halfbeak and Banded Needlefish, to Fan-bellied Filefish, White-spotted Rabbitfish and Sea Catfish. Along East Coast, amongst the clumps of sargassum, I find a profusion of beautiful button shells, every shell a gleaming little gem. At Pasir Ris, a swarm of little hermit crabs scavenged amongst the upside-down jellyfish and empty shells of horseshoe crabs washed up on the beach.

But it is at Sentosa’s Siloso Beach that my eyes are truly opened to the resilience of our marine biodiversity. Swimming across the narrow channel that separates the main beach from the little artificial islets, I find a richness of marine life I could never have expected in a tiny manmade lagoon. The groynes that form the outer limits of the islets have been colonised by littoral species. Barnacles and snails of all sorts carpet the rocks. I try to recap what little knowledge I have of local gastropod diversity… turban shells… topshells… nerites… planaxis… periwinkles… drills… limpets both true and false, all are present in huge numbers. Dusky-gilled Mudskippers leap and grapsid crabs scuttle away at my approach. Beneath the surface, gobies, Silver Sand Whiting and young flatheads dart amongst the rocks and seaweeds popularly known as mermaid’s fans. Small schools of juvenile Square-tailed Mullet and Kops’s Glass Perchlet patrol the deeper waters, along with the occasional Crescent Perch.

High above the strand line, just in front of the casuarina trees, a juvenile Water Monitor Lizard basks in the early morning sunshine. A Ghost Crab peeps out of its burrow, only to dart back the instant I look up. Amongst the empty crab moults and shells of long-dead clams and conchs, I find the bleached skeletons of sand dollars, belonging to both the Cake Sand Dollar and Keyhole Sand Dollar species. Closer to shore, I see that this beach has been colonised by Sand Bubbler Crabs, a scattering of tiny burrows surrounded by the tiny little balls of sand they create as they sift the sediment for food. In the shallows, the ground is carpeted with countless creeper snails, and whelks scattered here and there. It is impossible to walk without stepping on the molluscs, and one hopes that the soft and yielding seabed will prevent them from being crushed. Every few moments, the peculiar sight of the shell of a creeper snail scuttling along the seabed reveals the tiny hermit crab that has appropriated the shell after the original occupant’s demise. Sand collars, the egg capsules of Moon Snails, betray the presence of these predators, which spend most of their lives buried beneath the surface of the sand. The empty shells of Spiral Melongena and conch are home to a larger species of hermit crab, one with bright blue legs streaked with red. Young swimming crabs bury themselves in an instant the moment they spot me. Once, I even find a small Estuarine Stonefish. The ultimate discoveries though, are that of the Common Sea Stars, and the small red synaptid sea cucumber that floated along like a tiny piece of seaweed.

An entire littoral community, almost as wild as that you’d find on any natural coast, on the doorstep of the beach volleyball courts and cabanas. A real shame no one else seemed to notice.

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The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
– Rachel Carson

I never fail to be amazed and appalled at how little fellow Singaporeans seem to know the fellow creatures which live alongside us. Time and time again, I find myself cringing whenever I hear of people seeing ‘hummingbirds’ feeding at flowers, or of ‘chameleons’ basking along the pavements. I will never forget the time someone took a photo of egrets feeding in a canal, and submitted the photo to Stomp, calling them ‘swans’. Or the ignorant person who took a wonderfully clear photo of a Water Monitor Lizard and submitted it to the same website, thinking it was a young crocodile.

It’s the various incorrect names of the Water Monitor Lizard that always get to me. ‘Iguana’, ‘Komodo dragon’, even ‘crocodile’… and I would very much like to throttle the person who told Otterman about the Tyrannosaurus rex which inhabited Sungei Buloh. It is sad that we have here, one of our largest remaining native species, a species that can be quite easy to spot, one of our last remaining charismatic megafauna so to speak, and here we have so many people who don’t even know its proper identity.

All these point to a chronic obstacle where it comes to raising awareness of environmental issues: that of a lack of even basic knowledge of the most common aspects of Singapore’s biodiversity. It is always a sad day when people tell me that snakes sting with their tails, or that the Green Crested Lizard is venomous.

And coupled with this lack of awareness is an irrational aversion and fear, and an inability to coexist peacefully with the other beings that share our space. Hence countless insects which find their way into human households, from mantids and beetles to katydids, cicadas, and moths, end up having their lives needlessly snuffed out. Spiders of all shapes and sizes, which help prey on unwanted insect pests, get turned into dirty smears on the wall with a rolled-up newspaper in return for their services.

No mercy is given, even to fellow vertebrates. If the occupants of a household cannot find the capacity within themselves to accept the presence of a few geckos, then what chance does a Common House Snake have should it be careless enough to be spotted by humans? And if coexisting with the harmless species is already out of question, what more the idea of living with those that may actually cause bodily harm, such as the Reticulated Python or Black Spitting Cobra, but which would ordinarily go all out to avoid human contact.

This irrational fear and inability to accept the presence of all things non-human extends not just to those which wander into our homes, but even to those which live outside, seeking nothing more than to continue to survive even as their world changes. From monitor lizards prowling in the garden, to the swallows which roost in the trees outside one’s home, all are in breach of a sanitised, orderly and tamed Singapore. Even cats and dogs are not spared in this grand system, where the primary goal is the pursuit of profits, and appreciation for other species, nature, and the environment appear to be little more than a frivolous distraction.

And even among those who do know of Singapore’s biodiversity, it is sad that for many, the relationship with Singapore’s wilder side is an exploitative one. From poaching, to feeding of monkeys, to the release of captive (and often nonnative) animals in a misguided bid to gain karma, all these actions have profound and far-reaching ecological consequences, and all are rightfully illegal, yet stubborn proponents of these activities somehow refuse to look beyond their self-centred little bubbles.

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Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
– Rachel Carson

Beset on all sides, faced on the one hand with a blind and often unappreciative populace, while others seek to continue to exploit its riches for their own ends. And looming in the background, is the ever-present threat of being razed to the ground to make way for the latest shrine to Mammon. And yet, Nature is tenacious. From the Olive-Backed Sunbird nesting on the balcony of a 20th-storey apartment, to the Lawn Wolf Spider mending its dew-bejeweled web in a football field, to the Hawksbill Turtle that hauls out onto the beach at East Coast Park to nest, Singapore’s wilderness is always willing to surprise us, and reveal some of its beauty. But only if we are sharp enough to pay attention.

We cannot protect what we cannot love. And we cannot love what we do not know. Indeed, there are a great many mysteries out there in the natural world, but the root of the problem comes from our self-imposed blindness and myopia. It is time that Singaporeans became more aware of the beauty that lives amongst us, to understand that we do not live completely divorced from the environment, that our actions will ultimately affect the very same environment which we live in.

Open your eyes, and learn to listen amidst the cacophony of urban noise. Watch the birds as they fly above. Listen for the shrill call of the cicadas in the morning. Pause to look at the bushes growing next to the bus stop. For you may just discover a side of Singapore you might never have known has always existed alongside us.

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Species mentioned in this post:

Mermaid’s Fan (Padina sp.)
Sargassum (Sargassum sp.)

Casuarina (Casuarina sp.)

Upside-down Jellyfish (Cassiopea sp.)

True limpets (F. Acmaeidae)
Turban Shells (Turbo sp.)
Top Shells (F. Trochidae)
Button Shell (Umbonium vestiarum)
Nerites (Nerita sp.)
Creeper Snails (F. Cerithiidae and Potamididae)
Planaxis (Planaxis sulcatus)
Periwinkles (Littoraria sp.)
Moon Snails (Natica sp.)
Conch (Strombus sp.)
Spiral Melongena (Pugilina cochlidium)
Whelks (Nassarius sp.)
Drills (Thais sp.)
False Limpets (Siphonaria sp.)
Cuttlefish (O. Sepiida)

Horseshoe Crab (Tachypleus gigas)
Lawn Wolf Spider (Hippasa holmerae)
Barnacles (C. Cirripedia)
Hermit Crabs (Diogenes and Clibanarius sp.)
Swimming Crabs (Portunus, Thalamita and Charybdis sp.)
Ghost Crab (Ocypode ceratophthalma)
Sand Bubbler Crabs (Scopimera sp.)
Grapsid Crabs (Grapsus albolineatus and Metopograpsus sp.)

Sea Urchins (C. Echinoidea)
Cake Sand Dollar (Arachnoides placenta)
Keyhole Sand Dollar (Echinodiscus truncatus)
Common Sea Star (Archaster typicus)
Synaptid Sea Cucumber (F. Synaptidae)

Sea Catfish (Arius sp.)
Banded Needlefish (Strongylura leiura)
Striped-nose Halfbeak (Zenarchopterus buffonis)
Square-tailed Mullet (Liza vaigiensis)
Kops’s Glass Perchlet (Ambassis kopsii)
Silver Sand Whiting (Sillago silhama)
Crescent Perch (Terapon jarbua)
Banded Archerfish (Toxotes jaculatrix)
Gobies (F. Gobiidae)
Dusky-gilled Mudskippers (Periophthalmus novemradiatus)
Spotted Scat (Scatophagus argus)
White-spotted Rabbitfish (Siganus canaliculatus)
Flatheads (F. Platycephalidae)
Estuarine Stonefish (Synanceia horrida)
Fan-bellied Filefish (Monacanthus chinensis)

Asian Toad (Duttaphrynus melanostictus)
Hawksbill Turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata)
House Geckos (F. Gekkonidae)
Common Sun Skink (Mabuya multifasciata)
Green Crested Lizard (Bronchocoela cristatella)
Water Monitor Lizard (Varanus salvator)
Reticulated Python (Python reticulatus)
Common House Snake (Lycodon capucinus)
Paradise Tree Snake (Chrysopelea paradisi)
Black Spitting Cobra (Naja sumatrana)
Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)
Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)
Brahminy Kite (Haliastur indus)
White-bellied Sea Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)
Spotted Wood Owl (Strix seloputo)
Asian Koel (Eudynamys scolopacea)
Collared Kingfisher (Todiramphus chloris)
Yellow-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus goiavier)
Oriental Magpie-Robin (Copsychus saularis)
Common Tailorbird (Orthotomus sutorius)
Black-naped Oriole (Oriolus chinensis)
Olive-Backed Sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis)
Long-tailed Macaque (Macaca fascicularis)
Plantain Squirrel (Callosciurus notaeus)
Lesser Asiatic Yellow Bat (Scotophilus kuhlii)
Lesser Dog-faced Fruit Bat (Cynopterus brachyotis)