| Mother
& Grandmother of All Forest Destruction |
20
Feb 2007
Chinese New Year |
| A
new paradigm of forest destruction has arrived in Singapore today
-- the Mother and Grandmother of All forest
destruction. Surprisingly, the first victim is our national heritage-tree ideology. Sentosa Leisure Group (SLG) has shown us a brand new way of using the concept of tree conservation to camourflage forest destruction. For a corporation desperately seeking world fame, SLG has certainly scored an infamous world's first with this feat. How has this been done? Surprisingly Easy. First, go into the forest and mark trees with big white circles. When people enquire, tell them that these are really heritage trees earmarked for conservation. [Sound really nice, isn't it?] |
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While appearing ostensibly tree-huggers, they are actually tree-cutters (aka forest-destroyers) in disguise. [A good parody, I must say, for The Little Red Riding Hood story. We can make the wolf a good forest creature, the woodcutter the bad guy, and the benign ancient forest the lovable Grandma.]
In all eventuality, whether trees are marked or not, the forest will be fragmented -- cut up and reduced to an idealized garden for (in their words) "our guests' enjoyment". That's the bare truth.
It ought to arouse our indignation of just how low-down and twisted the notion of nature appreciation has become in Singapore today. After all, are we not living at the bosum of the rainforest capital of South-east Asia, and by inheritance, been breast-fed on the milk of true rainforest ecology? "Enjoyment" at the expense of forest fragmentation? Senseless -- is the word.
It is like killing our own mothers!
The word coming out of Sentosa is that SLG has engaged a "renowned landscape architect" [an imported talent?] to give our tropical forest a 'makeover' so that we can appreciate and enjoy it better. Can you imagine that? It is like inviting a world renowned plastic surgeon into our home and dragging our sweet old grandmother off to have a face-lift and breast-implants so that we can better appreciate her!
But alas...[sigh] as we peel our oranges and peanuts and munch on the sumptuous goodies our precious mum and grandma have prepared for us (as they do all their sweet loving lives), let us ponder over the dysfunctional 'green' family right here in Singapore who is bent on killing Mother Nature -- through deceit and indifference.
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Happy
New Year ? : (
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