Protect our central nature reserve by leaving it alone

Some 20 years ago, an acquaintance moaned about living in a concrete city. I disagreed with him because I was surrounded by numerous pockets of wild vegetation in Punggol where I used to live.

How urbanisation has overlaid its green landscape is shocking. There are avenues of greenery and waterways, but these are recreated after the land clearance. I experienced the process and therefore I remember.

Development for the benefit of mankind is not by chance but by choice. In a capitalistic society, everybody competes with one another to get ahead, earning more to live better. The competition is intense when nations are borderless.

New immigrants join us to build a country that is strong on many fronts, for the sake of driving the economy to shore up human and financial resources.

Our nation chose this development path, and in the process, we have lost grounds that were once homes to the island’s native flora and fauna. Nature must give in to people’s advancement.

It is unfair to say that Singapore does not balance nature conservation against socio-economic demands. We do, which is why we still have Pulau Ubin, Sungei Buloh and the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR).

Then again, especially in the light of recent events centred on the CCNR, I feel that we protect nature only if economic progress is not hindered (“Balance between progress, preservation is possible”; Aug 17).

To show our care for the environment, we fit in mitigation measures via environmental impact assessments after deciding, for example, to install the Bird Park at the CCNR’s northern fringe.

The CCNR is already hemmed in by different forms of development, be it transport, housing or entertainment. The cumulative impact is obvious from a bird’s-eye view rather than from each project per se.

The impact is not as indiscriminate as bulldozing Punggol, but it is accretive, as if frying an egg and singeing its white edges slowly inwards to the yolk.

We should recalibrate the baseline for conservation and protect ecology for what it is and not how we want it to be a la parks.

Let us leave the CCNR’s core alone and encroach on it no more.