Corlett draws the crowd

"The top 10 things we need to know about Asian forests"

Prof Richard Corlett
Department of Ecology & Biodiversity
The University of Hong Kong, China

Wed 10 January 2007: 4.00 pm
DBS Conference Room Blk S3, Level 5,
Department of Biological Sciences
National University of Singapore

Host: Prof. Peter K.L. Ng Director, Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research, NUS

About the talk - The forests of tropical Asia support 20-25% of global terrestrial biodiversity, but are now being rapidly cleared for commercial agriculture, while most forest areas that remain are degraded by uncontrolled logging.

The protected area system is inadequate, even on paper, and legal protection has often done little to deter hunting and other forms of exploitation. This regional crisis is well documented, but the response so far has been insufficient and piecemeal. The problems are social and political in origin, but Science has an essential role to play in planning, prioritizing and implementing solutions. Ecological understanding is going to be particularly important in the long-term management of small protected areas and in the restoration of degraded habitats.

Unfortunately, most ecological research in South East Asia has focused on a narrow range of largely academic problems, with the result that we understand neither how intact forest communities function nor how they are changed by human impacts. This seminar will give a brief introduction to ten gaps in our current knowledge and suggest how these gaps can be filled.

Earlier, another talk covered the legacy of the Swedish scientist Linnaeus, father of modern taxonomy, with an epilogue of delicate scientific illustrations by Helena Samuelsson that recall the timeless classical accounts of Bleeker.

Meanwhile, as with community cats and car-fed monkeys, it's the house crows who will now pay for the mistakes and mess left by men, who brought them to this island in the first place and whose careless waste and wanton trash sustained generations of birds which thrived for all the antipathy. One hopes that these shooters may at least know the difference between an alien corvid and similar sized raptors such as brahminy kites and black bazas.

An earlier article in the New York Times also quoted a Mr Lim, 54, who is said to be "standing by for a new challenge, the possibility of bird flu and the need to secure Singapore against migrating birds, perhaps by shooting them out of the sky." The sickness of Chicken Little, it seems, is really bringing the sky down on his fellow fowl thanks to the birdbrainmindedness of those who prefer to shoot first and ask questions later...