I've noticed an undertaking recently, back towards civility.

ci·vil·i·ty/səˈvilitē/Noun

<p>Civility Please Launch from Civility Please on Vimeo.</p>

• Share some of your life experiences
• What are the issues that deeply concern you?
• What have you always wanted to ask someone from "the other side"?

If we put aside our ideas of us being know-it-alls, and brought forth our childlike curiosity, with no intention to harm, imagine what we would learn! Mother Theresa once said: "The problem of the world is that we draw the circle of our family too small". Imagine if we widened this circle, if more people were real to each other, if people cared about each other, and the environment around them?

With a brilliant quote to end off, I echo Lesser's words:

Here's how the great Persian poet Rumi put it: "Out beyond the ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."

So, who's The Other you'll bring to lunch?

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That's the view from my room that comes up when it rains, and fog descends onto Singapore. Amazing. The Marina Bay Sands now really looks like a UFO in the distance. Hopefully not Armageddon for any of us.

Monsoon season seems to be really making its presence felt right now; the rains haven't really paused long enough for us to dry our hair - or shoes, or clothes - and providing ample opportunities for gym owners to holler out to the people whose runs have been blocked by droplets of water.

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First GreenDrinks session attended just a few hours ago (see Jan 4 post here), and I was frankly overwhelmed with the number of people! Clearly over-capacity, the show went on with a blast. Interactive session was not burdened by poor acoustics, and instead people were shooting out comments, questions and random ideas. Here's a summary:

Mammal sightings? Help us keep a record at mammal.sivasothi.com. No man can work alone in recording all these sightings, and crowd sourcing not only gives a sense of ownership but pride as well! Similarly, the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore - another crowd effort - is still going strong as ever, with 2009's haul of more than 13 tonnes of waste from our coasts. Most of which, surprisingly or not, turned out to be cigarettes. This event, FYI, happens worldwide annually, and 2010 was the 25th anniversary since the start of the event - and the 20th year for Singapore. Wanna know more? Check here for a site near you, globally.

See the full gallery on Posterous

But what about things going on with the government? Concerned about our precious land use? Well, the URA Concept Plan 2011 is still open and sourcing for feedback, so all you concerned residents in Singapore, do go take a look and give some feedback!

For the biology community out there, it's heartening to know that after the initiation of Blue Plan 2009 comes the Mega Marine Survey of Singapore. Exciting line-up! Launched by NParks, this mega-project targets mudflats, coral reefs, sea beds and all coastal areas of Singapore! No need for rocket scientists, anyone interested can volunteer to play a part in recognising our biodiversity! Simply click here to register your interest, receive information and take part!

Then came an interesting switch to the Green Corridors proposal, a combined effort between Nature Society Singapore, Singapore Heritage Society, and groups of architects and cycling enthusiasts. Addressing use of land left by the railway track once the railway service relocates to Woodlands, they propose a Green Corridor to enable connection of communities of people and wildlife alike.

Lastly, a huge bunch of thanks and appreciation going out to Olivia Choong, who started this whole thing going in Singapore. :D

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Posterous blog is done! Using this from now on if all goes well. Imported my nature blog (sunflecksurfer) into this one to give the nature entries new life. Checked back and some of the pictures and paragraphing is a little awry. Do go to the chief site to visit to read about the old entries for nature (ie. entries from 2008). Just click sunflecksurfer.

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Windchimes going crazy as winds take over in the house. Meanwhile, totally worth staying home just to see this solid spectacular view of rains overtaking Singapore.

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So the day started very unassumingly, with soft gentle rain tip-tapping on the window panes, and a sun too lazy to peek through the clouds. Steaming hot instant noodles, together with earl grey ice cream and anime made for a very good start.

And what did I do with my time?

It's mid-January and Annie Ang is back from her impromptu trip to the Tasikoki Wildlife Centre! With the aim of stopping the illegal wildlife trade, the centre was strategically set up in North Sulawesi, the centre and crucial trading point for animals such as the orangutans, tasiers, sunbears, pangolins and even gibbons through the region.

Tasikoki has become part of the Masarang Foundation since 2010 - and you may have heard of MF if you have followed Willie Smits' websites before. Say who?

Why, Willie Smits is the guy who showed us his efforts in restoring a rainforest! Video here (somehow video couldn't be embedded).

In October last year I brought Annie and a few other friends to a talk Willie Smits was giving at the National Geographic store in Vivocity - a "Think and Drink" organised by the Singapore International Foundation and Syinc. And what I heard from him astounded me.

His efforts for the past 30 years have been extraordinary - and this man just keeps going, and going. An avid protector of organutans and the forests they live in, he brings to life all kinds of action plans dedicated to resolving the root causes of deforestation, supports local governors and initiatives, and resynthesizes the way people deal with these problems.

Annie met with the man himself - and she'll have a guest post or two to share her experience on this trip, at the centre and actually seeing all these 'problems' we learn in class face to face. Keep close!

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WOW. Nearly a year since my last post - probably an indicator on how busy things have gotten! However, I've also gotten messages via this blog from people, and more than a hundred people read this blog every month - I'm pleasantly surprised and very grateful! Thank you very much, readers - and have a brilliant rest of 2011!

So quickly, some updates: I got back in May last year, and have been doing my final year project ever since. Am also working on another publication with some colleages, hopefully that works out. Grad school awaits when the articles have been published! (:

Pulled together like-minded people yesterday for a 'green' meeting yesterday - would have to say it was not only fruitful but also an eye-opener! Will be going for Green Drinks meeting this month for it's biodiversity double-bill, where one of the speakers is the ever-charming Sivasothi aka otterman!

Check out some past green drinks sessions and their speakers here. They're treating January as the month of Biodiversity - know anyone who is curious about the green scene in Singapore? How about those who have environmental-business inclinations but don't have the connections? Need to network but don't have the platform? Come to Green Drinks and start from there. Support the local Green Drinks! More soon.

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Courtesy of YJ. Informationisbeautiful does audiences worldwide a huge favour by visualising information in clear, concise ways. Here is one of the visualisations, that is applicable to science. Click here for more.

What's best about this 'map', is that this is what the author managed to get ONLINE, using websites publicly available, without actually talking to climate scientists. It's what would happen to me, or you, or anyone else who isn't a climate scientist and is trying to find out what is happening. And it was "a mammoth task" - so please, climate change scientists, this what I'm talking about when I say scientists should learn to communicate, otherwise their research loses meaning.

This blog, realclimate.org, linked from informationisbeautiful, is done up by climate scientists, and even so is claimed to be too technical for the author. Still, I think it's a good source at least.

It's pretty sad nowadays to watch climate scientists get shot down by people who don't know their facts - most of these people who hear about stuff from others, are influenced by politicians, and are not actually suffering the wrath of climate change themselves.

That said, I am in no way endorsing what the author of informationisbeautiful has placed on the map. It is simply a tool to look at things. I myself am not educated enough about climate change to claim any of these details as truths in research.

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Climate change is melting the glaciers in Nepal. It is causing flooding in Bangladesh. It threatens to submerge the Maldives and Kiribati. And in recent weeks, it has furthered drought in Tanzania, and typhoons in the Philippines.

We are the frontline states in the climate change battle.

Ladies and gentlemen, Developing nations did not cause the climate crisis. We are not responsible for the hundreds of years of carbon emissions, which are cooking the planet. But the dangers climate change poses to our countries, means that this crisis can no longer be considered somebody else’s problem. Carbon knows no boundaries. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this fight together. For all of us gathered here today, inaction is not an option. So, what can we do about it? To my mind, whatever course of action we take must be based on the latest advice of climate scientists. Not on the advice of politicians like us. As Copenhagen looms, and negotiators frantically search for a solution, it is easy to think that climate change is like any other international issue. It is easy to assume that it can be solved by a messy political compromise between powerful states. But the fact of the matter is, we cannot negotiate with the laws of physics. We cannot cut a deal with Mother Nature. We have to learn to live within the fixed planetary boundaries that nature has set. And it is increasingly clear that we are living way beyond those planetary means. Scientists say that global carbon dioxide levels must be brought back down below 350 parts per million. And we can see why. We have already overshot the safe landing space. In consequence the ice caps are melting. The rainforests are threatened. And the world’s coral reefs are in imminent danger.

Members of the G8 rich countries have pledged to halt temperature rises to two degrees Celsius. Yet they have refused to commit to the carbon targets, which would deliver even this modest goal.

At two degrees we would lose the coral reefs. At two degrees we would melt Greenland. At two degrees my country would not survive. As a president I cannot accept this.

As a person I cannot accept this.

I refuse to believe that it is too late, and that we cannot do any about it. Copenhagen is our date with destiny. Let us go there with a better plan. Ladies and gentlemen, When we look around the world today, there are few countries showing moral leadership on climate change. There are plenty of politicians willing to point the finger of blame. But there are few prepared to help solve a crisis that, left unchecked, will consume us all. Few countries are willing to discuss the scale of emissions reductions required to save the planet. And the offers of adaptation support for the most vulnerable nations are lamentable. The sums of money on offer are so low, it is like arriving at a earthquake zone with a dustpan and brush. We don’t want to appear ungrateful but the sums hardly address the scale of the challenge. We are gathered here because we are the most vulnerable group of nations to climate change. The problem is already on us, yet we have precious little with which to fight.

Some might prefer us to suffer in silence but today we have decided to speak. And so I make this pledge today: we will not die quietly.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in humanity. I believe in human ingenuity. I believe that with the right frame of mind, we can solve this crisis. In the Maldives, we want to focus less on our plight; and more on our potential. We want to do what is best for the planet. And what is best for our economic self-interest. This is why, earlier this year, we announced plans to become carbon neutral in ten years. We will switch from oil to 100% renewable energy. And we will offset aviation pollution, until a way can be found to decarbonise air transport too. To my mind, countries that have the foresight to green their economies today, will be the winners of tomorrow. They will be the winners of this century. These pioneering countries will free themselves from the unpredictable price of foreign oil. They will capitalize on the new, green economy of the future. And they will enhance their moral standing, giving them greater political influence on the world stage. Here in the Maldives we have relinquished our claim to high-carbon growth.

After all, it is not carbon we want, but development. It is not coal we want, but electricity. It is not oil we want, but transport.

Low-carbon technologies now exist, to deliver all the goods and services we need. Let us make the goal of using them. Ladies and gentlemen, A group of vulnerable, developing countries committed to carbon neutral development would send a loud message to the outside world. If vulnerable, developing countries make a commitment to carbon neutrality, those opposed to change have nowhere left to hide. If those with the least start doing the most, what excuse can the rich have for continuing inaction? We know this is not an easy step to take, and that there might be dangers along the way. We want to shine a light, not loudly demand that others go first into the dark. So today, we want to share with you our carbon neutral strategy. And we want to ask you to consider carbon neutrality yourselves. I think a bloc of carbon-neutral, developing nations could change the outcome of Copenhagen. At the moment every country arrives at the negotiations seeking to keep their own emissions as high as possible. They never make commitments, unless someone else does first. This is the logic of the madhouse, a recipe for collective suicide.

We don’t want a global suicide pact. And we will not sign a global suicide pact, in Copenhagen or anywhere.

So today, I invite some of the most vulnerable nations in the world, to join a global survival pact instead. We are all in this as one. We stand or fall together. I hope you will join me in deciding to stand. -------------------- Head here to sign a petition that will deliver your name to President Nasheed, who will speak at the Copenhagen conference.

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The first innovative approach to catch poachers I have heard of is taken by the company, Custom Robotic Wildlife.

Creating remote-controlled animal decoys, they use a tag team of four-person sting operations to catch poachers in the act. One controls the robot animal, one videotapes the poaching, and the last two tackle the hunters, who then find themselves with fines, or jail time.

Are these decoys actually convincing?

Taxidermy is used to good effect here - corpses of the desired animal robot are taken and stuffed, with the wired devices hidden in parts of the animal least likely to be shot at by poachers.

Not that I could find any statistics on how successful these operations have been, but noting that they make coyotes, deer, elk, antelope and bears, it sure seems like more people are giving them a try. Of course, they also make these robots for people who just simply want to chase off annoying geese on their lawn, or to law-abiding hunters as decoys.

Interesting approach. I'm skeptical, but well, we could use all the creative approaches we can think of.

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I may be late in finding out about this organisation, but they are interesting. 350.org is co-founded by Bill McKibben, one of the first authors on global warming to the public, back when no one really knew much about it. Find out about them in 90 seconds, all images and 0 words.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5kg1oOq9tY&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

As a platform to mobilise people to action all over the world creatively, 350.org has reached out to over 180 countries all over the world.

Ask them why 350 - and you'll soon find out that 350 is the safe level of carbon dioxide to have in the atmosphere, as deduced by scientists (Hansen et. al., 2008) through environmental modelling. Don't just take anyone's word for it, read the actual paper through the reference.

One thing that resonates loudly with me, is that they are using 350 as a way to reach out to people of all countries and languages, because numbers, images and changes can be universally understood.

In the same vein that Win-Win Ecology by Michael Rosenzweig illustrates, sometimes movements have to be radically different (read: NOT revolutionary, because revolutions are dangerous) for people to sit up and take notice.

Focussing on positive action, Rosenzweig's main opening in the book brings up an interesting idea. I am recalling this offhand, because I don't have the book with me. His book opens by saying that there are, basically, two 'R's in ecology now. Reservation ecology, and restoration ecology. These terms are pretty self-explanatory. We reserve land for wildlife and biodiversity, in nature reserves and parks, botanical gardens and marine protected areas. Restoration biology talks about protecting new areas that were previously occupied, through active human intervention.

He then proceeds to call for the third 'R' in ecology: reconciliation ecology. If there is land to be used, man trumps wildlife - and the number of reserves and their sizes are likewise limited. Habitat loss is one of the leading causes of extinction. It has happened, and still is happening. So what happens to the wildlife then? According to Rosenzweig, this is where reconciliation ecology comes to the rescue. By designing and integrating reconciliation ecology in every aspect of building society, we can share our land with wildlife - so that land is not necessarily a mutually exclusive part of the earth anymore. Anthropocentric outlook, I know.

Still, it's an interesting book to read, with many astonishing examples of reconciliation ecology, and a good concept to keep in mind - that said, it cannot be, as he proclaims, the way forward - simply because there are many animals that cannot share the same living space as us, as we in theirs. They require particular habitats, environmental conditions, etc. We cannot hope to occupy every bit of the earth and keep our biodiversity and ecosystems intact. A much more extended response to Rosenzweig's rose-tinted ecology is written here, by Thomas Brooks in 2003.

Lastly, in this short update of mine, is on James Hansen's desire for Copenhagen talks to fail - if they were fixated solely establishing a 'cap and trade' system, that is, in his view, fundamentally wrong as an approach.

What he says then, is intensely thought provoking:

"This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill. On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%."

Read the complete interview with The Guardian here.

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Norway now holds the world's first power plant to create technology that uses osmosis to generate electricity. Sited in a bay in south-east Norway, the plant opened on the 25th of November.

Statkraft is the company behind this, and is the third largest energy producer in the Nordic Region. FYI, they are a state owned electricity company. Their first plant prototype has been unveiled, and it can is still undergoing testing.

What is all the fuss about? Well, no one has actually used osmosis to produce electricity before, so this technology is new. There are of course many obstacles, but with the first prototype now made, they can test the system and see if it works before scaling it up! That makes sense, but wait, what's osmosis again?

Osmosis is a process of movement of water. It defines the spontaneous, or passive, water movement from a solution with a lower concentration of solutes (substances dissolved in water) to a solution with higher concentration of solutes, through a semi-permeable membrane. See the figure below for an example. The beaker holds two solutions, and the dashed line is the membrane. The solution on the left is more concentrated, and so water moves from the right into the left. See here for an animation on osmosis.

Using this concept, Statkraft intends to use salt and fresh water from the bay as the two solutions, creating a pressure gradient that pushes up the water level differences and eventually drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Still under testing, the prototype is able to produce enough energy to boil 2-3 kettle pots, and the company is still resolving problems of river bacteria and silt gathering on the membranes - their first obstacle before they scale up to produce energy for countries around the region.

It reminds me of when they first came up with the technology for reverse osmosis, the process that Singapore now uses to produce Newater as well as for desalination of salt water, that was an exciting time! Interesting stuff!

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Email today brought a piece of interesting news - greenpost is an integrated billing system designed to rid ourselves of paper billing, by going digital. Here's a screenshot:

The three major telcos in Singapore have already signed up, and I think that's a great step. Moving on to registering, I found it really easy to get myself an account. This is how it looks like at my homepage:

Now, as you can see, I don't have anything billed to my name because they're under my parents' names, so here you see there's N.A. for all the four billers. Of course, when I get back and when I start renewing my contracts and stuff, I'd eventually add the billers to my account. What I'm going to do next is to get my parents to sign up for this.

So do I need to go online every time I want to view my bill? Well here's the great part: bills can be downloaded to your computer, so you can have an unlimited archive of all previous downloaded bills in pdf format stored in your computer. It makes me wonder if they have tied up with any company that provides programmes for budgeting and handling financial accounts - now that would be a cool system to get into. Imagine yourself being able to check your accounts on your blackberry/PDA whenever, wherever, that's convenience at its peak.

But before I digress, I was thinking: there must be some catch, right? Turns out that this is a free system; no one is going to have to pay, and the site seems secure. Seeing how I got this email via NUS sources, I pretty much trust it already. So searching some more gave me this article reported in October 2009 by WILDSingapore.

If you search the site, and go to the FAQs, you'd also notice this little thing saying: earn credits while you save paper! Or something to that effect. Point is, they're talking about carbon credits here. Every time you get a new bill online, they also tell you how much paper you would have saved.If greenpost can save 2 million sheets of pages per month, it can enable itself and its billers (its companies) to earn carbon credits.

That to me, is tough territory here. Carbon trading has been in talks since about 20 years ago, and carbon credits, carbon offsets, carbon neutrality, carbon taxes, all threaten to propagate the perception that pollution is OKAY, and instead give licenses for polluting companies to carry on. While I give it credit (pun intended) that this is a new field, we should be cautious about the assumptions it makes, and perceptions it perpetuates.

It doesn't remove the source of pollution, but instead allows it carry on under a facade, a guise that they are somehow compensating and so do not need to cease their polluting ways. It's the same as how Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is used by countries as an index of economic development - initially conceptualised to quantify social progress by the United Nations in 1945 - but does not really measure social progress, and instead becomes a larger value even when pollution increases, traffic accidents increase, and hospitalisation rates increase -> because GDP per capita increases whenever there is a monetary transaction, in other words, whenever money exchanges hands. As a result, industrialised nations increase their GDP per capita, but at what cost? That topic however, is for another time.

Carbon credits don't weed out the source, but mediate symptoms instead. For information on carbon trading and its history, Larry Lohmann writes sharply, and his book is available here.

Back to the topic. While there are great advantages to a system such as this, tech-UN-savvy users who are not connected to the internet or don't even have computers will be left out of the system. It addresses the majority of users yes, but we should be careful not to make certain factions of our society become passée. It doesn't mean we don't go ahead with these plans, but it means we should take steps to incorporate these people.

I applaud GreenBills on its commitment to its mission for a paperless billing system nationwide by 2012 - now remember to click on "Stop Envelope" when you sign up and add the billers to your account, because that tells the billers their customer's demand to stop paper billing. It doesn't mean you immediately stop getting paper bills - your biller will tell you when they are going to stop it - but it means you're letting them know you want this.

Lastly with the money that companies are saving from not sending customers their bills by post, we should also insist that whatever polluting ways they have should stop. Corporations should channel this money responsibly, not into more pollution or more technology that brings pollution. Otherwise what we have done is not offset our increasing usage of the environment, but further increase resources used instead. Onward!

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So what is it with all this species talk? Here's some quick background.

The systems of classification we have today in biological science for living organisms have many levels. They start from Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and finally Species. Of all of these levels, note that the only "natural" classification is species - why? Because we recognise the individual for itself, and the species is a fundamental unit that is not grouped together with other individuals based on a set of characteristics that people think is important, because this can be flawed. Note that classifications are a human construct after all, just as the theoretical science we make our rules in the world by are simply hypotheses that have yet to be proven wrong.

As the earth aged and thousands and millions of years passed, species on different continents adapted to the different conditions present there. In certain parts of the world however, this set of abiotic conditions (things like amount of moisture, air, temperature, nutrients, etc) were similar - and living organisms living by this same set of conditions may have adapted to this set of conditions, growing to have the same kind of external form, and thus looking the same. We call this convergent evolution. Click here for more examples of convergent evolution.

Lineage-wise though, they may come from extremely different ancestors. Cacti are one example. Desert conditions are so harsh that only a certain set of characteristics have prevailed, and plants from different families (DNA-wise) in different deserts have the same characteristics: needle-like leaves, succulence, deep roots, etc. On the other hand, two individuals that look completely different can be the same species: a few cases in point are ants and termites. Ever see how different soldier ants are from worker ants? And look at the queen!

Okay, so we know morphology isn't enough. So what exactly is a species? This kinda seems pretty clear cut, doesn't
it? Well it actually is kind of fuzzy - though most scientists agree on
using the Ernst Mayr biological species concept:

"Groups of populations that can actually or potentially exchange genes with one another and that are reproductively isolated from other such groups"

It's not so clear after all, and there are many other things to take into account. What about organisms that breed asexually, such as fungi and aphids? Or living things that hybridise? The picture gets more fuzzy as we consider more things. Remember though, that this is a human construct, and we can keep coming up definitions that fit best as they can; sometimes they don't fit for all cases, and we may need separate definitions for others. It's not made in stone! For a quick, easily absorbed lesson in speciation, go here (recommended!).

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Yes, if you don't already know this, you read right! I was just messing around with my computer system when I stumbled upon this: Ecological Corridor for Bukit Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

REALLY??

And this is recent too! Oh, how I wish I subscribed to newspapers here in Toronto, and that they were free. I don't visit news webpages enough, it seems.

So back to this. Finally! Some people would diss the building of an ecological corridor, because being a relatively new field (the concept is not that new, it dates back to beyond 1986), coupled with the fact that ecological experiments and results take years and decades to show, they'd say it's doesn't work. Of course, there's a lot of theoretical work.

How the width and nature of different corridors are suited to different functional groups (ie. predators, prey groups); how vegetation types planted there affect movement of these animals; whether to build above ground or below ground corridors, so on and so forth. Most of the time the conclusion ends up with: what corridor is constructed is specific to what species it is directed towards, and that affects the success of the corridor. And the funny thing is that we just went through this in class last week (again, because in Community Ecology we're studying the theory of Island Biogeography and patchiness, etc).

So how do we justify building one?

Well it seems that in systems where we cannot afford to lose something, the precautionary approach is one that should be taken (read: we should build it if predicted benefits > costs). In this case, perhaps some would say building one is better than having none at all. For Bukit Timah however, it may prove a case of "too little, too late". Let's hope that won't come true.

Supposedly the link will be done by 2013, if all goes to prediction. Taking into account that the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) was built in 1986, that's some 27 years of physical isolation between the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR) and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (BTNR). Will behaviour and migration patterns of local animals have changed? Will animals, used to a relatively 'quiet' habitat within the forest (especially of the CCNR that is >3000ha large), move to the BTNR, and vice versa, over cars and vehicles zooming past below them? Noise and lights are a significant disturbance to many animals, and enough to induce behavioural changes.

Grace Chua writes in the Straits Times: "..[the corridor will be] planted with dense trees resembling a forest habitat, could help populations of animals like the critically-endangered banded leaf monkey to recover".

Banded-leaf monkeys are extremely shy, arboreal creatures, hardly seen by people because they live so high up, avoiding noise and disturbance. The media has an important role in education, and should moderate the public's expectation of a result like this. Should their movement patterns not include the eco-corridor in a couple of years, critics may claim eco-corridors don't work after all, when in fact there are many things we have yet to learn not only about eco-corridor functionality, but also about even the banded-leaf monkey life history and characteristics.

Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada has been a leader in eco-corridors (refer: wildlife crossings) and they are in a similar state with BTNR-CCNR road bisection by the BKE. They have been successful in promoting the movement of many animals, but one should note that different animals have different characteristics and functionalities. While concepts such as learning curves and infrastructure to improve corridors can be generalised for application, we should take note not to promote high expectations of corridors that might eventually lead to a 'perceived failure' of them when they do not deliver within a given timespan.

Again, because of generational times of animals and plants, their population dynamics and disturbances, results of building the corridor may be difficult to predict, or discern even after a decade. As Navjot Sodhi of the Conservation Ecology Lab at NUS says, "only time will tell.". Meanwhile, as we wait, we should continue our efforts to preserve biodiversity, educate the masses and re-tune attitudes of today towards making an effort for the environment we live in, if not for the environment/animals, then for ourselves.

It is heartening then, to note that the National Parks has come up with a National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan. As a citizen and as a human being, we all have a stake in what surrounds us. Sacrificing nature for pure concrete buildings without a thought for leaving the same or more capital and environmental wealth for the next generation to carry on is not mature, it is not smart. We are fortunate to be living in Singapore, where majority of us can afford to address our basic necessities and focus on other interests such as culture, arts, etc - so in this day and age, let us not only learn more, but take action for our lives and for the generations to come.

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