To get to Pulau Ubin, most people take a bumboat ($2 for a one way ride) from Changi Point Ferry Terminal. A stone's throw away, a narrow pedestrian bridge links Changi Village to Changi Beach Park, a popular campsite and fishing spot. During low tides, the flats of Sungei Changi are exposed and from the bridge, one can easily spot dozens of mudskippers and even fiddler crabs plying their trade on the mud trapped amidst the roots of the odd mangrove tree growing by the seawall.
When the waters are high, schools of torpedo-like mullets, compressed scats and long-jawed archerfish join the ubiquitous halfbeaks close to the surface. The jetty provides shade and shelter for the fish that are just visible in the trash-lined water, tinged with green and gray from algae in a soup of excess nutrients. Further to the left of the ferry terminal, the remnant rocky shore and the surrounding seagrass patches offer rich pickings when the tide is low enough for walkers to scour the stones for nudibranches, sea stars and other creatures many deem implausible (common responses to pictures of seahorses at local shores are "It can't be real" or "Somebody must have released it there").
The notion that there is nothing left to preserve or cherish is unfortunately the biggest hurdle to nature conservation on this island, where monitor lizards are fearsome monsters and swallows are troublesome roosters. There is little that is 'natural' in conceptions of nature limited to spacious parks, landscaped gardens, re-created 'forests' and manicured seasides where optimum space is made for human invasions and what nature exists (in the form of grass, cultivated shrubs and trees and a pitiful handful of mostly non-native birds and lizards) serves as eye-candy to soothe imaginations unruffled by the lack of life that is truly wild. In these minds, there is much 'nature' in the island's abundance of sterile green spaces where families may flock and feast, but ample shock or disbelief that there are still other tameless beings that cling on to what remains of the island's unlawned wastelands.
Not even domesticated creatures are spared; animals remade in the image of man to serve his needs and wants as helpers and companions get short shrift from folks who can see nothing but danger, filth and disease, be it in hounds of high breeding or pussies of poor standing.
There is little inkling of the impact that human pursuits and the juggernaut of growth (in both profit and population) have on the larger world that both feeds and fosters human life itself. The streets are now overflowing with bodies united in the frenzy of seasonal consumption. In this festive bliss, it seems that neither peaking tides nor rising temperatures could have any conceivable effect on the prices, products and prospects that matter most on this air-conditioned isle.
Wetlands are thus reclaimed, being nothing more than barren swamps that are better off as arenas for adventure-seekers. Seemingly immune to the true cost of hydrocarbon, a national obsession with the roar of high torque seeks to drown out the refuge of quiet nooks and the strenuous calm of wind-swept coasts. There is nary a thought given to the facade fuelling a futile drive for fossil-replacements that add more to the problem and destroy what is left of habitats that can never be replaced by the mere act of planting trees. And the draw of chic thrills blinds moneyed minds into seeing a recovering forest as a haven to be hacked and rendered habitable for those who like their nature served on a platter and paved by a path.
Back on Changi, the ageing bumboat to the day's walk over Chek Jawa navigates a narrower course than usual. The mouth of the river is nearly blocked by a massive barge with an onboard digger. The arm of the machine plunges into the sediment, ploughing up the soft mud that emerges grey and grim. Save for a few mulling mullets, the churned-up channel appears all but lifeless; not a halfbeak, much less an archerfish, was seen.
The weather was wonderful. A blazing sun failed to bake, and northeastern spirits blew a merry window of cheer from shore to eastern shore. Unfortunately, the sea was surging. The tide thundered to heights that lifted the boardwalk's pontoon off its mooring, preventing access to its glass bottom, and the silted waters, even at their lowest point, shrouded our eyes from much of the livery in the shallows. But further up on the banks burnished by prop roots, the fiddlers courted and chased in formation, delivering an ensemble that tickled and teased the group in no small measure. Mudskippers pranced the inner mangroves and a young water monitor basked on the mound of a mud lobster.
Later, we made a stopover by Pekan Quarry. The cliff overlooks a heronry of rare richness in these parts. On the bleached skeletons of long dead trees, grey herons, little egrets and possibly night herons have found a safe abode to nest and roost. The eyrie of a sea eagle sits high above the colony, which is for now untroubled by the threats of land development and deliberate culling faced by its mainland counterparts. For all the ravages of man, there is resilience in nature. Even in a form much trammeled and reduced to species that can thrive on the dregs of humanity, the seeds of dispersal and radiation remain in lineages that have survived planetary plagues. These genotypes of adaptive plasticity will likely outlast the follies of a species too sure of its success and too bent on higher planes to see the plain fact that there is more to life and love than the law of indefatigable returns.
Cho Boh Lan! You must be fucking free!
Posted by: CBL | 03 December 2007 at 07:23 PM
What, is it troll season again? Now that's one species I would love to see wiped off the face of this planet.
Posted by: Hai~Ren | 04 December 2007 at 02:54 AM