Volunteer Recognition Event (Conservation Division)

18 Nov 2006. It's the first time we decided to gather all the volunteers from Central Nature Reserve, Pulau Ubin and Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve together for the year-end recognition event. The event was a success, with close to a hundred volunteers and staff mingling with one another and enjoying the activities such as (Rain)tree-climbing and a guided walk to the HSBC TreeTop Walk.

Tay and Derek caught some really interesting portraits and actions on their cameras... will post them when I am back after mid Feb. Meanwhile, do check out photos taken by Dr. Chua's on his Flickr and also posts on Ubin's volunteer blog.

Apologies for the late update. "Heartware" has been down at home : P

Reforestation at Big Island, Hawai'i

I am fortunate to travel to Big Island, Hawai'i and had a great opportunity to visit the lush native rainforests in the amazing volcano park. My guide brought us into the rainforest (where tourists are not allowed) to do reforestation and do our little part for the native rainforests. We are tasked to remove the ginger plant - an ornamental plant in Hawai'i (not sure what is the scientific name), not the normal ginger plant we are familiar with. The rapid growth of the ginger plants is affecting the other native plants and ferns. We could see them sprouting all over the forests as we walked through the area.

We need to pull out the roots of the ginger plant to remove it completely. The concept is similar to what we did for Simlax reforestation except that the ginger plant is not a climber like Simlax. Here is the photo of the roots of the ginger plant. For a goup of six people, we managed to remove a huge bag of ginger plants, with roots. It feels good to be helping out, though in a small way.