- Between 1953 and 2018, Singapore lost nearly 90% of its mangroves to urban expansion and other human activities.
- Singapore has launched a new nature park that covers 400 hectares (990 acres), in an area that serves as a refueling site for migratory birds and a home to oriental hornbills, otters and crocodiles.
- The initiative is part of a larger effort to plant 1 million trees across the city-state by 2030.
- In addition to adding wildlife habitat, researchers say reforestation will help sequester carbon, lower the temperature of the city, and provide buffers against erosion and a rising sea.
SINGAPORE — Languishing in the soft, silty mud, the living fossil looked as if it didn’t have a care in the world as it feasted on the fish left stranded in the tidal mangrove pools of the Sungei Buloh wetlands. However, the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) might have been a little less at ease if it knew nearly 90% of its mangrove habitat in Singapore has been lost over the past century.
But now […]
I remember the first time (in Venezuela) when I was on a small boat being rowed thru the mangroves. A very surreal, otherworldly experience surrounded by these amazing trees rise out of the water are rooted deep below the surface. At one point, we came to a very large tree that, strangely, from a distance, appeared to be white, as if it was a ghost tree. When we were about 50 feet distance, there was a huge soft sound of movement in the air as hundreds of large birds took flight. These extraordinary trees play a powerful role in the eco system.