The ACRES Report on Online Illegal Wildlife Trade on Telegram [in Singapore] (Nov 2023)

The illegal trade in wlidlife wot its modern tools significantly impacts the natural functioning of ecosystems and is responsible for silent forests. The issue is one of ethics, the environment, animal welfare, public health, indigneous rights, governance and organised crime. 

It’s a massive subject and is connected to us right at our doorstep.

One aspect is the occurence of the illegal sale of animals online. ACRES’ 2023 report on the iliegal wildlife trade on Telegram is troubling:

“NParks has nabbed some sellers on Telegram, however our investigation surveys in 2021 and 2023 have reveal a disturbing 196% increase in prohibited wild animals offered and a 586% rise in individual sellers. In just 122 days, 993 prohibited wild animals were being advertised for sale on three Telegram chats – that’s 8 prohibited wild animals a day, just on three chats!”

From the report, a comparison of activity between 2021 and 2023:

The report is helpful in providing an idea of local activity, the limits of self-regulation by online portals, local laws which could help address this and examples of international policy and legilslation – all useful basic information for educators. Read the full report and its reccomendations here

See also “Illegal wildlife trade detected on Telegram doubled from 2021 to 2023: ACRES” by Ang Qing at The Straits Times (31 Dec 2023).

Reading eBooks on Libby with a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite 8.7″

E-books have been a boon for me – almost no delay in acquisition, they are backlit with a large font size for ease of strained eyes, sync-ed to phone for reading at bus-stops and in queues, enable easy note-taking and referencing, occupy zero space and can’t accumulate dust! 

I bought these Max Hastings books at least a decade but htey are available as ebooks now. I love the (enlarged) text on an iPad Mini compared to the tiny font of a print book. They  are lovely to behold but space on the shelf is competitive. 

My iPad Mini is over a decade old and the OS can’t be updated any more. While Kindle still works, Libby, which I use to read ebooks from the National Library, gave up. So I got a Samsung Galazy Tab A7 Lite. It’s wokring fine once I have the book open.

The $13.50 cover is lovely.

At the office: Mac Mini M2 + 27″ Dell Monitor

What a relief the 27” Dell monitor screen has been – I paired it with a M2 Mac mini 1TB/16GB in May ’23 and it has been lovely.

When my Intel Mac Book Pro died in Mar ’23, it was the middle of semester so I hurriedly and trepidatiously bought a refurbished 13” M1 Mac Book Air with just 8GB of RAM from Apple. As it turns out, 8GB of RAM is fine with the new M-series architecture. I was blown away by the performance and the reduced need for RAM. Lectures continued without a hiccup.

By November 23, Lazada was unloading  256GB SSD units for $1k+ and still is. Undergrads at NUS all have a 1TB One Drive account so MBAs are much more accessible for basic needs. Ironically my MBA would have its motherboard++ replaced twice. Once after a coffee spill (Aug 23; my fault, $400) and then a perplexing hardware hiccup (Sep 23; their fault, so $0). Yes Apple Care+ is necessary.

I became a frequent visitor at Apple Store Orchard and was expert at executing the 50+ steps of app instalation, settings and license entries needed each time. 

While my personal 13” M1 Mac Book Air was working fine on the road, my eyes increasingly needed relief. Hence the 27” Dell U2723QE screen when it as time to replace the MBP. The screen with the Mac Mini was well under the alloted staff budget. When they sweetly asked if what I had asked for was enough, I explained with Apple’s Silicon M-series chip, it was fine!  

My files have been up on iCloud, DropBox and OneDrive since my troubles a year ago, and the 100MBps wireless connection at the office sometimes chokes. Don’t ask – somehow it’s worse if I use the ethernet! With the 1TB local SDD, all the frequently used lecture and video material now reside locally, so there are no more download lags. Well, I am happy about the peaceful times with this Mac Mini now.

That covid MBP was too exciting. On 2nd March 2023, the 3.5 year old 15″ Intel Mac Book Pro i7 2.7GHz, 1TB/32GB gave up its ghost after a string of problems throughout the covid pandemic. The 2016-2019 Intels were notorious about battery overheating, screen flickering and USB-C port failure, all of which I experienced, along with video output problems during that era of remote lessons. It certainly kept me nimble and I loved how friends on Facebook chipped with all sorts of solutions which I did try!

It was the first Mac laptop not to last five years. Goodbye Mac+Intel.

Reviving Flickr Pro after a two year hiatus

I revived the NUS Toddycats and my personal Flickr Pro accounts because we keep having to refer to old albums/collections which go back to 2005. They were reasonably well curated which helps: https://www.flickr.com/photos/habitatnews/collections

Now that the tremulous years of Flickr are over with the SmugMug takeover in 2019, the US$143 they now charge for two years is fine. The business model has to survive and at least SmugMug immediately solved my hacked Yahoo account problem (age was zeroed, so child account) which Yahoo took my money for and ignored. And there have been other improvements including transfer flexibility – users can download all of our account data, such as photo albums, contacts, and comments.

So as we resurfaced with events and engagements, we realised we much prefer Flickr for image hosting and curation. I did have to wrestle with the yahoo email associated with the Toddycats Flickr account (a curse of the Yahoo acquisition from before), but thanks to my password manager, 2FA and secondary account password recovery, all is well once again.

Different tools are needed for specific chores so I will still use GDrive for sharing access for photo uploads by various folks after an event. 

Using Microsoft SharePoint for work collaborations – seamless when editing documents too

13 Jul 2021 – I pulled my head out of my files in Dropbox, iCloud and Google Drive folders for a bit to figure out the Office365 offerings of OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, due to institutional collaborative needs. The options accumulated over the years and access was not always smooth but is much better now.

It just took one article – “The Document circle of Life” by MS’ Matt Wade (2019) explained the use of OneDrive vs SharePoint, amongst other things, and this sums it up: “OneDrive is for my stuff and SharePoint is for our stuff.

Simultaneous collaborative use of Office documents has been robust now, and was very helpful during the staff recruitment exercises I conducted last year. I realised SharePoint had finally caught up with Google Drive and its precedents which I had been using since 2006.

Sharepoint interface on web, desktop and phone, syncs in seconds now.

The SharePoint web interface has clean lines and is syncing quite well with desktop and phone. And since both staff and students have Office 365 with 1TB of storage, I will shift research students from Dropbox to SharePoint – it will be especially helpful when reviewing their drafts close to deadlines, when there is often  simultaneous use. 

A couple of friends love MS Teams for project supervision but I am happy to avid it for now, although NUS adds our classes to that interface for us. 

Dropbox is the most seamless cloud platform for documents and revision histories, so I still use that. Google Drive seems best for collaboration with volunteers, especially for photo sharing. And after Dropbox messed up my Keynote presentations once, I keep those in Apple’s iCloud.

It is good to have all these options now, and I just need to step back to review capabilities every now and then. Like I do with backup!

The map of Singapore’s ravaged 19th century forests in H. C. Hill (1900)

Maps are critically useful in any examination of Singapore’s landscape, and Hill’s (1900) report is shocking in the account of the extent of forest loss, after 81 years of colonial rule.   

Report on the present system of forest conservancy in The Straits Settlements with suggestions for future management by H. C. Hill. Singapore, 1900.

 

In May and June 1900, H. C. Hill, the Conservator of Forests of the Indian Forest Service, studied published reports and visited forest reserves in Singapore with H. N. Ridley (Director of the Botanic Gardens) and W. L. Carter (Collector of Land Revenue). 

He includes a map in his report which is available online. It reflects the extensive exploitation which the Singapore landscape suffered at the time. His language too reflects the insult on the landscape, and he makes recommendations for management, relevant to the land use at the time. 

For an idea of subsequent changes to the landscape, see NUS’ Historical Maps of Singapore. 

For Natalie Quah, who asked for this in the midst of her lecture preparation.

Job: Full-Time Teaching Assistant at the College of Humanities and Sciences (BSc Hons, two positions, 2-year renewable contract)

Job: Full-Time Teaching Assistant at the College of Humanities and Sciences (BSc Hons, two positions, 2-year renewable contract).

All 2,000+ incoming Arts and Science students at the new College of Humanities and Sciences will read a common curriculum of 13 modules. An integrated module of this curriculum is Scientific Inquiry 1 – HSI1000 “How Science Works, Why Science Works”. This module will enhance students with an overt and applied understanding of the scientific method, which is an effective problem-solving tool for any situation.

HSI1000 will provide an interactive experience of labs, workshops, field trips and panel discussions, and is helmed by a team of motivated and experienced educators from the Faculty of Science – Ryan P. A. Bettens & Adrian M. Lee (chemistry), Yeo Ye & Sor Chorng Haur (physics), Seow Teck Keong & N. Sivasothi (biological sciences).

Full-Time Teaching Assistants (FTTAs) will be at the forefront of the module, working closely with the module professors, and facilitate small group sessions at the lab, workshops and field trips, mentor students, facilitate panel discussions and oversee student needs.  

We are pleased to be able to recruit two more FTTAs to the existing team; fresh grads may apply. Candidates with an interest in teaching and facilitation, science and its history, student mentorship and care, who are keen to work with a motivated team in a dynamic environment, are invited to apply. Training is provided.

View the details and application link here.

2nd May 2021 – moved all my meetings online and suspended/postponed all face to face events

Update (3rd May 2021) – Singapore reverts to Phase 2 from 8th to 30th May 2021.

Singapore is entering a near-lockdown to arrest the impact of COVID-19 infections, of which we have seen cases in the community increase recently. 

Singapore is experiencing its worst spate of Covid-19 community infections in close to a year, in a painful reminder of how the virus situation can flare up without warning.

But if contact tracing, testing and quarantine protocols are as effective as before, and people do not let their guard down, the current situation could come under control within the next week or so, experts said.

NUS issued a circular last night which has us on 100% WFH this week and 50% thereafter until 23rd May 2021. 

I shifted all my meetings online, declined others which are still face to face and suspended all field trip events (guided walks, mangrove cleanups and habitat enhancement) until 23rd May 2021, which is the period of heightened mitigation as per NUS guidelines.

This affects all NUS Toddycats field events, and the Biodiversity Challenge events with the Biodiversity Friends Forum. Such a pity as this is the best time for undergraduates to experience our guided field trips and I was to begin training of Team Leaders.

Oh well, pandemic reared its head. We will see how things are at end-May.

This pretty much sums up our current situation  – Prof Dale Fisher, chair of the MOH’s National Infection Prevention and Control Committee had “…urged people not to go out unnecessarily for the next few weeks and to minimise mingling with people outside their households.” [link]

We want to avoid another Circuit Breaker – PM Lee at May Day Rally [link]:

“Mr Lee hoped Singaporeans would work together with the Government against the virus, and not let down their guard. He noted that with new strains of the virus emerging, Singapore’s Covid-19 situation can deteriorate rapidly.”

“We are watching our own situation, and it can easily, quickly, turn bad again,” he said.

“If we have to do another lockdown like last year’s circuit breaker, it would be a major setback for our people and for our economic recovery. Let’s not make it happen.” 

He added: “It is not time to relax yet. This is a marathon. Let’s keep jogging. Let’s keep ourselves safe.”

Alright, all hands on deck, and we will beat this!

Is your stitched macOS PDF unreadable by Adobe Acrobat? “Export to PDF” solves this.

A PDF I sent students was unreadable by a friend trying to read the file on Adobe Acrobat Reader n a desktop PC. This felt like a repeat of a problem I experienced in 2019 with macOS Catalina. And I had thought a Catalina update had fixed the error.

This time, on the Big Sur 11.3 Beta, the problem surfaced after I had stitched two PDF files in macOS Preview. The resulting PDF was not completely readable by Acrobat on either a PC or Mac. Page 5 of the 7 page document produced this error message:

A solution had been suggested for this new problem on this Adobe forum last year for macOS Mojave – when viewing the combined file in Preview, choose File > “Export as PDF” to generate a “true” PDF file. I tried this and indeed Acrobat could read all the pages. 

Looks like it accurate to say macOS Preview corrupts a stitched PDF – goodness! Good to know.

Prof Daphne Fautin, RIP

Prof Daphne Fautin was Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Curator, Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at the University of Kansas. She was a blessing on this earth, as a scientist, teacher, mentor, humanist and friend.

Here she in the middle of a search for mangrove anemones and taking time to tenderly free a mangrove horseshoe crab (?2009 photo by Ria Tan).

She made wonderful contributions to marine science in Singapore and touched many of us with her humility, good humour, brilliance and dedication.

R.I.P. Daphne, thanks for spending all that joyous time with us.

Daphne Gail Fautin, 25 Mar 1946 – 12 Mar 2021.