International Vulture Awareness Day: Vultures in Singapore

(Photo by reurinkjan)

Today is International Vulture Awareness Day, and I thought it would be appropriate to write about records of vultures in Singapore.

But why do we need a day to celebrate vultures? As stated on the International Vulture Awareness Day website:

Vultures are an ecologically vital group of birds that face a range of threats in many areas that they occur. Populations of many species are under pressure and some species are facing extinction.

The International Vulture Awareness Day has grown from Vulture Awareness Days run by the Birds of Prey Programme in South Africa and the Hawk Conservancy Trust in England, who decided to work together and expand the initiative into an international event.

It is now recognised that a co-ordinated international day will publicise the conservation of vultures to a wider audience and highlight the important work being carried out by the world's vulture conservationists.

Woman struck by fallen tree branch outside Istana

STOMPer Yoko says a woman was badly hurt by a falling tree branch outside the Istana grounds. He says he saw her being stretchered off into a waiting ambulance.

This is the latest in a series of incidents involving falling trees and branches in Singapore. Read an earlier story on the subject here.

Yoko describes the scene:

"A woman got hit by a fallen tree branch outside Istana at about 4.15pm this afternoon (June 9).

"I caught sight of her being carried onboard the ambulance. She had a brace around her neck to cushion her injury.

"I hope she is fine."

A spokesperson for SCDF told STOMP that they received the call at 4.08pm. The woman has since been brought to a hospital for urgent medical attention.

What does smashing porcelain bowls have to do with saving sharks?

This publicity stunt for ACRES' shark-saving campaign left a STOMPer with a bad taste in his mouth. He feels that the whole activity was terribly wasteful and made little sense.

Here's what the unhappy STOMPer wrote in an email today (Oct 4):

"I saw ACRES doing a demonstration outside Plaza Singapura today. They are known to have very striking demonstrations but I think this latest one is in very bad taste.

"They were encouraging passers-by to come into a booth to smash china bowls, and then they used the bowl fragments to create a shark. This was to tell people that with less bowls to serve sharks fin soup we will have more sharks remaining.

"I think their correlation of cause and effect is very flawed. Just because we smash bowls doesn't mean shark hunting will stop. Furthermore this is plain wastage.

"All the bowls could have been given to charity instead of being wasted here. What kind of message are they trying to send?

"Given the current global emphasis on ISO14001, conservation of resources and stopping wastage, I hope all agencies supporting ACRES will stop to consider what they have done today."

Nothing much to say in response to this post, but this person's main points are somewhat addressed in my own post on this event.

Big tree falls, damages vehicles in Orchard Rd

An accident occured today (January 17) around 3.00pm when a big tree collapsed and damaged a bus and a car, causing a traffic jam in front of Orchard Towers.

A STOMPer has a store front of where the incident happened and sent STOMP an MMS.

The contributor says:

"This just happened and I witnessed the entire incident.

"The tree just collapsed and hit the top of the bus and damaged it. Another car in front of the bus was hit as well.

"Fortunately, nobody got hurt but the traffic jam just started building up. It is a mess over here at the moment. I think the authorities are also stuck in the traffic to clear this up."