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Thread: Breeding and helping in conserving/recovering our nature lo

  1. #1
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    Breeding and helping in conserving/recovering our nature lo

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    As I read from some conservation articles that some groups and individuals are breeding native fishes and later, releasing them back into the wild. Similar moves can be also be seen on Animal Planet's documentary whereby eg. a pride of lions are relocated to some other places where the number are decreasing fast.

    If you have chance upon this information, Chocolate gourami is supposedly a native fish to Singapore, but has somehow disappeared from our rivers and streams. So does some other bigger gouramis. I was pondering if is it possible and legal for us to do the same restoration to our native localities? WHat I can think of is to restore some barbs and gouramis population such as chocolate gouramis and clown barbs. If the farm bred fishes are released instead, would there bad effects on the locality?

    If there's such a move, who would be interested to be part of the breeding programme and even the 'maintenance'(?) team to check back on the released fishes? There would be manpower and funds required if so.
    人的一生﹐ 全靠奮斗﹐ 唯有奮斗﹐ 才能成功

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    I would like to take part in this kinda of activity as well. Maybe we can form into several small teams and each team takes a species to breed. A central committee is needed to check the state of the fishes and the population. Hopefully the central committee will consist of people from the AVA and other biologists from local scene.

    It will be something interesting and it will be a good experience in which I can tell my son when he grows up. Hopefully he can follow in our footsteps in conserving nature.

    Cheers
    Vincent
    If you truly love Nature, you will find beauty everywhere. - Vincent Van Gogh

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    what kind of water bodies are you looking at releasing into? to repopulate the forest and central catchment? or populate some of the accessible park ponds with native fishes (instead of koi)? or some of the cleaner drains and canals?

    E.g. many canals are populated with tiger barbs, which is not strictly native althought it is at least from Southeast Asia, would be good if we can replace them with the T-barb, P. binotatus, or R. elegans. We may also have to deal with the introduced predators such as cichlids and LH.

    Just yesterday I saw a guy letting go his LH into the Pierce Reservoir, didn't stop him in time. For that matter, the reservoir is filled with peacock bass which is also an introduced predator.
    why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
    hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica

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    Oh, if you want to reintroduce species, can use wild caught specimens from Bintan rather than farm-bred specimens, although you'd have to keep mixing specimens from the wild to keep up the gene pool.
    why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
    hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica

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    introducing the fishes to the parks would be good since there are park rangers roaming around, but might have to seek permits? The jungles and catchment areas are unguarded, although they are good locations too.

    I am wondering if LH hunting (or other non native pest) and other pro-active public education could be a better way to stop all these illegal releasing.

    An example of helping the public could be : one can bring his/her unwanted LH to a place where he/she get maybe $2(eg) refund and free disposal of it. The unwanted fishes can eventually be contributed to eg. Singapore Zoo for feeding purposes. Another way could be having a group of volunteers to set up some station at various CC to do a mass collection of unwanted LH and later bring it to the ZOo?
    人的一生﹐ 全靠奮斗﹐ 唯有奮斗﹐ 才能成功

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    Guys, your ideas are really noble but there are a few question that needs to be answered.

    Food Supply.
    Have anyone identified what is their dietary supplement that exist in the said water catchment area? As in the documentary that someone here has viewed, food supply is critical and has to be identified early to determined if it can support the newly introduced fishes. Any other fishes that would also consume the same food as the newly introduced fish would consume to prevent any shortage of food supply. If this can't be identified 1st, we could lose more natural fish species in SG than when we 1st started.

    Identifying Natural Habitat.
    We need to identify and categorised natural occurring water catchment area from man made ones. We would need to know the history of this area to make sure that any live stock that we found ( should we want to start this project) are really naturally occuring, not just a pond that someone start to dump in any fishes.

    This is what I could come up with right now. Will post more soon.
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    Yes, that's why some studies must be put in. Any idea why the fishes disappeared in the first place (apart from urbanisation in some areas), or was it because the mentioned fishes does not exist in the existing preserved localities?
    人的一生﹐ 全靠奮斗﹐ 唯有奮斗﹐ 才能成功

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    Most likely due to forest clearing. Remember that even most of the catchment is secondary forest and only a very small area in Bk Timah is actual primary forest. The rest were cleared in the 19th century for gambier and pepper plantation.
    why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
    hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica

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    Roland, thanks for giving such a thought for our nature.

    I was having a walk at Khatib Bongsu last weekend, discussing with one of the expert team from NSS, about the pressing issue of developmental destruction of such nature place. They're always that passionate in conservation.

    Perhaps, you can consider talking to some of the experts from NSS about such legal/bio-breeding issue. I believe they would be happy to offer their advice!

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    naturetan, how about inviting them into the forum, we probably have enough interest on a biodiversity/conservation forum.
    why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
    hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica

  11. #11
    I've always wondered what reintroduction aims to achieve. An ecological system evolves either naturally or due to artificial intervention (e.g. man releasing LH). Would the counter release of "original stocks" address the perceived inbalance of the system?

    Then again, reintroduction has seen some limited success from what I know, for example the orang utan reintroduction efforts in Kalimantan and Sumatra.
    Another quality, non aquatic-related post from mrs budak!

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    reintroduction helps where the orginial population got wiped out by a disrupting event but which suitable condition may now have returned. for accessible water bodies contaminated with introduced predators and fast spawning species, reintroduction will have to go together with alien elimination.
    why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
    hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica

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    But have you guys ever think why they disappear? If its because of alien species like LH eating them up, we should remove LH instead of putting more fishes. But I think very little LH can survive out there because there's Singapore's waterways protector, the snakeheads!!!

    Well, chocolate gouramis, hmmm, should be quite easy to breed them. My wild bettas are coming in on the 28th.
    Lyon © I would rather walk a thousand leagues then to see your ugly face

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    Hi all, here a useful site, enjoy
    http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/guideb...h/text/230.htm
    Lyon © I would rather walk a thousand leagues then to see your ugly face

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