While browsing through books at the nature section of a bookstore last week, I came across an interesting 397-page hardcover book titled "The Heritage Trees of Penang". The book was first published in 2011 and was reprinted this year. Penang is a state in Malaysia that I had visit a few times over the years for holidays and would always make time to explore some of its nature heritage. In the most recent trip in December last year, I managed to find time for a short walk at Penang National Park for the first time in the midst of the year-end wet weather.

Needless to say, this book immediately caught my attention. While flipping through the pages, the pictures of one of the trees appeared to look similar to one that I saw in Penang but was unable to identify. This tree was found just by the side of a bus stop and it had many flower buds arranged in branched spike-like clusters. It was on the day that I was waiting for the bus to take me to Penang National Park. A search online later proved that this was indeed the tree that I was looking for --- Crypteronia paniculata. Addition to that, it helped me to link some flowers found on the forest floor at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in March 2014 to Palaquium gutta.

Back in Singapore, there was a book on our nature heritage, titled "The Nature Heritage of Singapore (third edition)" published in 2010. It covers a broader scope and not specifically on trees alone. Nevertheless, both books torch on the same pressing issue on rapid de-forestation over the years at the 2 geographies due to social economic development needs. Penang and Singapore have quite similar average temperature range and annual rainfall. Many of the trees seen in Penang are also available here.

The land area of Singapore is about 714 square kilometres (km²) while the area set aside for nature reserve is about 33.5 km², which is about 4.7% of our land. Compared to Penang, including the mainland part, which had 6% (64 km²) of the land gazetted as permanent forest reserve, Singapore is slightly behind in this aspect. As mentioned by the authors of the Singapore book, nature heritage is part of a country's national legacy. We need to protect and conserve it for the future generations.

This then led me to the topic on the planned construction of the MRT tunnel (Cross Island Line) that cut through part of the Central Catchment Nature Reserve at MacRitchie area. Though the train line may be going under the ground, no one will know how it will impact the forest on top of it in the long run. Moreover, the evaluation work for the construction is expected to cause some disruption to the forest. I would expect the nature reserve status of the forest to include the underground part as well.

For more information on the potential damage to our forest, you can read the Position Paper published by the Singapore Nature Society, which also offered an alternative route of the train line to go around the reserve area. Recently, a group of concern nature lovers has set up a Love our MacRitchie Forest blog to highlight the importance of our forest and seek ways to reverse the plan on constructing the train line through this area. The nicely done music video in the blog sum up what we have at MacRitchie and what we need to do about it.

It is already quite disheartening each time when I see a green space being cleared for construction work, be it for residential or commercial purpose. Now, we are even trying to test the limit by encroaching the forest reserve area. I think this is really too much and whoever that suggest this has to re-think the approach for the sake of our future generations and the risk of destroying our nature legacy.

More information on the potential threat to MacRitchie Forest: | Facebook | Developing MacRitchie |