READ: How Singapore is actually doing the opposite of being the green urban utopia portrayed in Planet Earth

An overview of Gardens by the Bay. Photo: LWYang / Flickr
An overview of Gardens by the Bay. Photo: LWYang / Flickr

For folks who’ve watched the epic entirety of Planet Earth II (if you haven’t, you’re not doing your job as a human being), you’d already know that Singapore gets a huge shout-out in its sixth episode. It focuses on nature’s newest environment — sprawling cities — and our little island gets pinpointed as a futuristic habitat that makes a major effort to invite wildlife into urban surroundings.

“What really attracted me to Singapore was the ethos of building a city within a garden — the idea that Gardens By The Bay, for example, has been built before the skyscrapers that are going to be built around it… I think we’re really championing city greening in a futuristic way,” said Fredi Devas, the producer who helmed the show’s final episode.

Laudable our efforts may be to outsiders (cities built in harmony with nature! Ooh la la!), but most folks are unaware that these man-made developments are replacing the natural habitats that already exist, thereby encroaching the native wilderness. It’s a fact that’s all too familiar to us when we trekked deep into our jungles with artists who are archiving the sounds of Singapore’s wilderness while it still exists.

Robin Hicks — the wonderful bloke who went down to experience the country’s last R-rated cinema before it closed down for good — explains the irony of featuring Singapore in Planet Earth II in his extensive piece on Eco-Business. Though the documentary portrayed Singapore as some kind of utopia where cities and nature meet, Hicks points out that it’s actually the opposite.

Read his whole piece here; and check out some highlights below:


On the artificiality of Gardens by the Bay

Cloud forest
Photo: Gardens by the Bay / Facebook

“Conservation experts say it is misleading to suggest that Gardens by the Bay is a magnet for animals when none of the hundreds of plants species growing on the super trees – which light up at night and blare music – are native, and so have limited appeal for local wildlife.

Dr Ho Hua Chew, the vice-chairman of the conservation committee at non-governmental organization Nature Society of Singapore, notes there were larger populations of species such as Lesser Whistling Ducks in the area before Gardens by the Bay was built.

Also, only animals that can adapt to man-made structures and are not wary of people — like otters and sea eagles — will visit the area.”

On the disappearing rainforests:

Photo: Mandai Park Holdings

An “eco link” is to run through the expanded zoo to connect the nature reserve, and an environmental impact assessment by Temasek-owned Mandai Park Holdings suggests that the effects of development will be “small”.

But it is hard to argue that developing 34.5 hectares of forest that is home to critically endangered species such as the Sunda Pangolin, Lesser Mousedeer and a population of 40 near-extinct Raffles’ banded langurs has much to do with conservation.

Other patches of forest, such as Tengah, Lentor and Bukit Timah, are also being encroached upon. And almost half of the forested area in Coney Island, which was home to Singapore’s last free-roaming cow (until she died after a check-up by vets in September last year), is to make way for an adventure park, say sources close to the project.

On the concerning attitudes toward wildlife:

singapore macaque
Photo: ACRES / Facebook

Calls to local wildlife rescue charity ACRES have doubled in the last three years as animal habitats are displaced, and animal-related complaints to the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority have increased markedly since 2014.

The AVA was set up in 2000 to safeguard the wellbeing of Singapore’s native animals and plants, but the department is often criticized for carrying out reactive, unjustified culling programmes to placate complaints from the public.

Earlier this month, the AVA culled a flock of 24 free-roaming chickens following complaints of noise from 20 residents. It was an incident that reflected Singapore’s general intolerance of its own wildlife, eventually justified on health and safety grounds (bird flu) by the AVA.



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