Well another week and another set of plans have gone out of the window in terms of this post’s content. That’s partly due to my general inefficiency and partly due to a fabulous day spent rescuing tree shrews, monitor lizards and a spitting cobra, but that’s a story for another time. Instead I am keeping things short and sweet with a cheetah success story, news of my favourite wildlife exhibition, some fat bears and a trip to a cemetery.
I don’t know why, but I’ve always been a big fan of old cemeteries -I think it’s the sense of calm that comes from the quiet decay - so imagine my delight when I was recently introduced to a 200-hectare burial ground dating back to 1922.
Bukit Brown Cemetery, named after the former landowner George Henry Brown, was once home to 100,000 tombs potentially making it the largest Chinese cemetery outside of China. Today it offers a wonderful green sanctuary (with a spooky side for good measure) situated close to central Singapore.
It officially closed in 1973, and has survived a few threats of redevelopment since then, most recently in 2015, when the government wanted to clear the site to make way for a new motorway. After a public outcry, a compromise was reached with just 4000 graves being exhumed to make way for the new Lornie Highway, which now bisects the cemetery.
Of course, this disruption has led to plenty of tales of grumpy ghosts wandering the grounds looking for their bodies. If you’re so inclined (it is coming up to Halloween after all) there’s even a night tour you can take where you try and track down some of these unhappy spirits.
The only truly scary thing I’ve ever encountered was a couple of stray dogs after taking the wrong path, but there is a suitably eerie air. For the most part nature has been allowed to run riot, encroaching on paths and tombs alike to give the whole place a wonderfully overgrown and abandoned feel.
The fact that the cemetery has been around for nigh on a century means it boasts a magnificent collection of mature trees: towering Albizia’s with their gorgeous lace-like canopies, sprawling rain trees bedecked in Bird Nest and Rabbit Foot Ferns and some wonderfully deformed strangler figs.
Even better, most of these trees are positively humming with bird song (listen to the brief audio for a sample) while notable spots from previous trips have included a collared kingfisher who seems to guard the main gate in, pink-necked green pigeons, parakeets, woodpeckers, black-naped orioles, a swirling cloud of swifts out catching insects ahead of a coming storm and a huge gaggle of Asian glossy starlings gathering noisily at the top of a tall Albizia.
Aside from the birds, the other real joy of Bukit Brown is the chance to explore the various crumbling tombs in relative solitude. Unlike many of Singapore’s parks, such as the nearby Botanic Gardens, Bukit Brown has remained pretty quiet, even during Circuit Breaker, and you’ll not meet more than a handful of joggers, cyclists and dog walkers during your visit.
My excuse for consistently getting lost
For first timers, there’s a well signposted heritage trail which you can follow that takes you passed some of the more notable spots – notable both in terms of the tenants and the tomb designs – and makes a good introduction to the history of the cemetery. Just check out the information post inside the main gate off Kheam Hock Road.
Of course, you’re also free to take the myriad side paths, which weave through the jungle from one lopsided tomb to the other, often passing shabby lean-to’s and faded tarpaulin, evidence that some of these sites are still visited and maintained by the families of the residents. There are numerous weather-beaten signposts dotted around the space to guide you, though I have to confess that I lose all sense of direction whenever I go walking here.
As a result, pretty much every trip has ended up with me on a dead-end path forced to stumble wildly through the undergrowth to emerge once again in the modern world slightly relieved and coated with a healthy dose of spider’s webs and mud.
Despite the wonderful timeless atmosphere of Bukit Brown, it is on borrowed time with the whole place slated to be redeveloped into housing by 2030, make to enjoy while you can.
Cheetahs on the move
Rietvlei Cheetah, Credit: African Vision’s Photography
From cemeteries to cheetahs (another of my favourite things) and a positive story of population recovery. The world’s fastest land mammal is also one of the world’s most threatened big cats, as a 90% loss of their historic territory in Africa has seen the population numbers plummet to just 7000 globally.
Yet a long-running project in South Africa is managing to reverse that decline as it focuses on creating a network of protected populations in mostly private game reserves across the country. By swapping cheetahs between these different reserves, the Cheetah Metapopulation Project, set up by South African Endangered Wildlife Trust, ensures the population can flourish while reducing the risk of inbreeding. Started back in 2011 with 217 cheetahs spread across 41 reserves, the numbers have now grown to 419 located across 60 reserves; that’s almost a third of the countries entire cheetah population.
Most recently the project helped to ensure the return of cheetahs to the Rietvlei Nature Reserve near to Pretoria. Indeed such is the success of the project that they are now looking at the possibility of translocating cheetahs in Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique.
The best in wildlife photography
“Treetop douc by Arshdeep Singh, India / Wildlife Photographer of the Year”
So somehow October has rolled around, which means it is time again for the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. Now in its 56th year, this is probably my favourite photography competition of the year, and always manages to both celebrate the wonder and diversity of the natural world, while also highlighting humanity’s often destructive impact on that same world.
This year’s short list of images is no exception, covering everything from peeking possums, squabbling foxes and an endangered monkey to raging fires in the Amazon and a wild animal meat market in Sulawesi. For the first time, this year’s winner will be announced via a digital ceremony that you can follow through various online streams next week (13th October).
That ceremony is ahead of the physical exhibition, which will open at the beautiful Natural History Museum in London on October 16th and runs through June 2021. If you do happen to be in the city or passing through, then I can’t recommend it enough, not that you should ever need an excuse to go to the Natural History Museum, one of the most beautiful buildings in London.
Bears with big bootys
747 - a real jumbo of a bear
And we finish with the results of another competition, this one focused on giant brown bears in the wilds of Alaska. Fat Bear Week is an annual event, where the general public gets to vote on the biggest brown bear spotted waddling around Katmai National Park, in southern Alaska.
Park rangers identified 12 particularly rotund resident bears and pitted them against each other in head to head knockout rounds with the public voting through their favourite. This year, the fact that we’re all desperately looking for good news stories and are stuck at home much more than normal, saw the competition get global coverage as tens of thousands of bear fans logged in to vote.
2018 champ 409 Beadnose
Of course, the competition is not just about celebrating body positivity, but a way of raising funds for the park while educating the public about the behaviour of brown bears. As autumn arrives, the bears gorge on salmon caught in the park’s Brooks River in a bid to pile on the pounds and ensure they have enough fat reserves to get through the upcoming months of hibernation. During this period these animals can almost double their weight going from an already hefty 600 pounds to a whopping 1000 pounds plus. Check out how they do it with this web cam where you can watch the bears fishing in the river.
This year’s final, saw the skilled and efficient angler ‘747’ take top spot for the first time, reeling in over 25,000 more votes than the ‘enigmatic’ runner up, 15-year-old male, Chunk. You can see a video of the worthy winner in action below and get an idea of just how much weight these guys put on here with these before and after shots.
There will be further bear talk in the next post, when I plan an update on Free the Bears, a great NGO working in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos rescuing captured Sun and Moon Bears, victims of the gruesome bear bile trade and illegal trafficking. I did a story on their soon-to-open Laos sanctuary back in 2018 but followed up with them last week to find that a lot’s happened since then, including a starring role in a great BBC documentary. See you next week for that and more conservation news.