Trouble in wild city

Abstract

Trouble in Wild City is a visual essay which explores the delicate balance between development and nature conservation in space-starved Singapore.

Singapore is undertaking massive megaprojects – from a vast 126-hectare “eco-tourism” zone with zoos and a 400-room resort in the Mandai district, to a 700-hectare “forest town” in Tengah and plans to run a rail line beneath the virgin Macritchie rainforest in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR). Meanwhile at sea, marine life faces precarity from being buried under mountains of sand as the city reclaims sea for a 1339 hectare mega port.

But while unrelenting development fuels economic growth in one of the world’s richest countries, it comes at a cost – environmental degradation. Activists point to the fallout – media reports indicate that in 2018 alone, native animals like a critically endangered Sunda pangolin, leopard cat, three sambar deer and a pregnant wild boar were killed in Mandai.

The Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) received about 2,000 displaced animals in 2017, up 25% from half a decade ago. According to veterinarians, animal rescues have since increased. For example, 30 pangolins were rescued in 2018, a year after construction began at Mandai and Tengah.

Employing documentary photography techniques over a period of 6 months, the author interviewed wildlife experts, activists and policymakers to shed light on the tensions and contradictions when man and nature collide amid an ever-encroaching modernity.