Singapore's Last Unique Animals Face Extinction
http://animal.discovery.com/news/reu/20020415/singapore.html
April 18 - Singapore's only unique wild animals - one of the world' largest squirrels and a monkey that lives high in the forest canopy - are perilously close to extinction, a researcher said Thursday.
Peter Ng, the director of a museum on biodiversity at the National University of Singapore, said the Cream-colored Giant Squirrel and the Banded Leaf Monkey have fallen victim to urbanization and shrinking forests.
"In the old days both animals were listed as common. They numbered in the comfortable thousands," he said.
Less than 20 Banded Leaf Monkeys and no more than four squirrels still live in what is left of the tiny island nation's forests, Ng said. Their likely extinction will mean the end of the last animal sub-species found only in Singapore.
"We're pretty sure they're kaput," he says. A representative from Singapore's national parks board said the country is working with local groups to study and protect the animals. But with only three percent of the island set aside for parks, efforts to breed the animals in captivity and reintroduce them to the forests will fail, Ng said.
"Even if you do bring them back in the zoo, what do you do? You can't release them back into the wild because there's so little of it," he said. "It's the price of urbanization."
why worry? still got lots of monkeys in this forum what....
somemore got imported one monkey from china also here...
Aug. 14, 2003 — A new, landmark study shows that Singapore has lost about half its animal species in the last 200 years, and that the rest of the region is likely to follow suit very soon.
The study, published in the science journal Nature, was carried out by researchers from the National University of Singapore and Australia's Northern Territory University.
Given the extensive destruction of habitat, the researchers predicted the loss of up to 42 percent of animal populations in Southeast Asia by the end of this century.
After examining detailed documentation of the state of mammals, birds, fish and butterflies on the island, they found that at least 881 of 3,196 recorded species, or 28 percent, are now gone forever.
Taking into account the probable number of animals in the area before the keeping of detailed records in the late 1800s, the researchers stated that the loss is actually higher than 28 percent, and probably represents as much as 50 percent of Singapore's animals.
The researchers stated, "Large-scale conservation efforts need to be implemented if these rates of extinction are to be abated."
Habitats have been destroyed by a number of factors. Agriculture and urban development are the two main culprits behind the mass extinctions, but over-hunting and fishing, and the heavy shelling of nature reserves during World War II, also played a part in the destruction.
Among the animals most threatened with extinction are two mammals found only in Singapore: the cream-colored giant squirrel and the banded leaf monkey, said one of the study's authors, Associate Professor Peter Ng of the National University of Singapore̢۪s Department of Biological Sciences.
The populations of these two mammals have thinned out so dramatically that there is no hope for their survival, according to Ng.
"These are effectively the living dead," said Ng, who is also director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research.
According to the study, the prospects for Singapore's surviving animals look bleak, since 77 percent of species are already under threat, and most of them are concentrated in nature reserves.
The researchers recommended that action be taken to save as many animals as possible as soon as possible.
"It's imperative to hang on to all our protected areas," Ng said. "We can't change history, but we can try to hang on to what we have now."