I finally visited the amazing forest exhibition at the Singapore Botanic Gardens! Celebrating
International Year of the Forest 2011, this exhibition transformed the Botany Centre into a mysterious forest!
I particularly love the wonderful painting of colourful forest birds, done by Lioe of Pulau Ubin. He is indeed a talented artist!
Entitled
"Forest, People, Environment" the exhibition is a feast for the eyes and a great place to learn about and be inspired to do something for Singapore's forests.
The exhibition is full of interesting panels detailing Singapore's forests and how their existence in our highly urbanised little island.
With an explanation of the Singapore Index on Cities' Biodiversity, a
Singapore initiative to help cities everywhere measure how they are conserving their plant and animal species, which was
finally adopted last year.
There is a series about the issues surrounding the disappearance of forests.
The entire exhibition is thickly decorated with all kind of plants. Including our native plants!
Also lots of attractive displays and stories about forest products.
There are also several books with actual samples of plants from our forests!
A fascinating display of the animals of the forest with museum specimens. The animals are flattened and look like road kill because this is how museums save storage space.
Among the many things we can do is to plant a tree!
As part of this exhibition, a massive series of talks are being held over the next few weekends. This morning, I attended Robin Ngiam's inspiring and educational talk about Singapore's dragonflies. We now have 125 known species of dragonflies and damselflies!
I didn't know that male dragonflies are usually more colourful than females. And that their colour can change as they grow older. Wow!
Robin had lots of awesome photos to share. Like this amazing sequence of an adult dragonfly emerging. Since they usually make their final moult before dawn, I can imagine Robin had a sleepless night documenting this!
Robin also shared some of the places where we might be able to enjoy dragonfly watching. Among them are our public parks, like at Toa Payoh!
Of course Robin covered lots more including a series of fascinating video clips. Robin has recently written a book about our dragonflies and he uses it to answer some of our questions, such as "Which is the biggest dragonfly in Singapore?" More about
Singapore's dragonflies, and Robin's
dragonfly book.
After Robin's talk, I did
my little talk about our seashores. Crystal gave a lovely introduction.
And I had some very interesting and interested people in audience.I had a great time giving a brief glimpse at some of our favourite shores such as
Cyrene, but also unexpectedly rich shores on places like Changi and artificial shores including pontoons! Also shared
what's so marine about International Year of the Forest, some of the heart-breaking
threats to our shores, and what ordinary people can do to make a difference! Simply explore, express and act: more on the
wildsingapore website.
Thanks to everyone for coming for the talk!
Do drop by the exhibition and come for the many interesting talks organised in conjunction with this event. More about this on the
NParks website.
