Second wind for Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum at Chinese Gardens?

SINGAPORE — With three more weeks left on its lease and no place to rehouse more than 500 animals under its care, the Live Turtle and Tortoise Museum of Singapore could get one more extension before it is required to vacate its Chinese Garden premises.

The site it occupies will be part of a makeover of the Jurong Lake District, which is scheduled for completion progressively from 2020.

In a joint response to TODAY’s queries on Wednesday (March 7), the National Parks Board (NParks), the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority said that NParks is “further studying the project timeline” to see if museum owner Connie Tan, 47, “can be given more time to firm up her plans”.

Pointing out that they had “empathised” with the museum’s need for time to source for an appropriate site by extending her lease twice from 2016, the agencies stressed that Ms Tan had turned down an option to relocate to Kusu Island in May 2016.

“We have been in contact with Ms Tan and will continue to engage her on her plans for the museum,” the agencies added.

Ms Tan was informed as early as 2011 that her lease will be up in 2016, as the authorities made plans to transform the Chinese Garden into Singapore’s “new national gardens in the heartlands”. It is set to be one of the highlights of Jurong Lake District, which is projected to become the second Central Business District.

When contacted on Wednesday, Ms Tan stood by her decision regarding Kusu Island, which is a 45-minute ferry ride south of Singapore. She had visited the site with officers from SLA and NParks in May 2016 and found that it was too inaccessible to draw visitors and revenue.

“I have replied to them verbally and in writing to explain myself many times… That place is a dead place. Sending the tortoises and turtles there is to send them there to die. It is not conducive,” she said, noting that there are no healthy grass patches there, and the temperature and humidity is unsuitable for turtles and tortoises to lay eggs.

Exasperated and upset by the agencies’ latest response, which she sees as not saying anything new, she said: “They are not solving the problem. They are just prolonging my agony. Where can I go?”

An extension of the lease is what she needs. “I am really in a fix (unless) they (draft) me into Singapore’s (land use) masterplan,” she added, explaining that hers is the world’s only turtle and tortoise private zoo, started 16 years ago with her late father Danny Tan.

FACEBOOK MESSAGE TO PM LEE

On Sunday, Ms Tan turned to Facebook to appeal to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, asking that she be allowed to stay on in Chinese Gardens after its redevelopment. The post went viral and was shared more than 6,000 times.

In it, she detailed how she had failed again to secure a new place at leisure facility Orto in Yishun, because SLA rejected her bid. The reason was because she is not holding the right licence and the use of the space at the facility cannot be changed.

Orto can only be used for recreational fishing and horticulture, as a camp site, for adventure training and to host plant nurseries and sports facilities, while Ms Tan holds a licence for the display and exhibition of turtles.

She is now trying for a place in Sungei Tengah, and does not wish for “Singapore to lose something that is the only one in the world” and which is “being appreciated by many foreigners instead of my own countrymen”.

On Monday, Mr Lee responded to her message. “Thank you for your post, which I have read. Please be assured that MND (the Ministry of National Development) and the agencies are looking into your case,” he wrote.

Ms Tan told TODAY that the agencies have yet to contact her after Mr Lee’s post, while she had received requests from five Singaporeans who are offering their properties — one of them a vacant bungalow — as a possible holding place.

There are more than 40 species of turtles and tortoises at the Chinese Garden attraction. About 60 per cent of them were rescued: Some were seized by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority from illegal traders, while others were abandoned by members of the public who left their pets by the museum’s doorstep.

If she cannot find a place in Singapore, Ms Tan said that relocating to Malaysia is a possibility even if she is reluctant to do so. It would have to be farther in than Johor Baru, where land is cheaper since she does not have much savings. “Likely, the visitors won’t be Singaporeans. That’s bad,” she said.