Monday, September 20, 2004

Bukit Timah Nature Reserve as an Education Center?

In Iowa, a team of engineers and scientists plan to build an indoor rainforest complex (the image of Jurassic Park came to my mind) for educational purposes. This US$180 million project comprises of a 3.5 acre indoor tropical rainforest, an 1.2 million gallon aquarium and also recreated wetland and prairie. Serving both as a tourist attraction and education center, project members hope to bring in some US$5 million dollars in grant money each year. Courses will be made available to schools through an existing network.

The idea sounds good and this could also be a possibility we can explore in our own backyard, using smaller plots of forests as pilot projects and maybe eventually moving to Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. The education center could serve as a education hub for tropical rainforest ecology for the region. Already, several science enrichment companies are using the reserve for paid guided walks and simple ecological projects. Perhaps existing institutions such as NEA or RMBR could explore this possibility.

Science, engineering professors take an interest in rain forest

3 comments:

Sivasothi said...
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Sivasothi said...
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Sivasothi said...

Well, Iowa has to construct an indoor rainforest because they DON'T have a rainforest! It's worth everyone's attention when they do something like that!

Words here like "hub" and "tourist attraction" make me shudder. Bukit Timah is fragile enough without the thought of the onslaught of hordes of visitors.

But why fret? After studying tropical rainforest ecology for two years in Singapore, the first thing I did when I graduated was to spend a month in Borneo.

Which tourist in his right mind would travel to Singapore to visit our humble tigerless rainforest that struggles to survive when there is Kinabalu, Pasoh, Lambir, and even Gunung Bintan in the region?

Even STB shrinks at the challenge, and they managed to bring millions to Sentosa.