Was the tree damage at Mandai Forest really a carnage?

Lekowala, Ladybug and myself went down to take look at the damage inflicted by the 11th February 2011 storm on Mandai forest and were awed. It is with good reason that my students aren’t allowed to stay in the forest during a storm. And to think Ladybug had been complaining about her sunflower seeds being decapitated by Xylo the cat.

Here, windstorms had twisted and decapitated 15-25-metre trees. Everyone’s sad as our forest can’t take too much of a beating, really, they’re already such itsy-bitsy fragments. So it was “carnage”, as The Ubinator described!

To put it in perspective, I used one of Adrian’s photos from today and a Google Map Street View photo from ?some years ago. Click the images for the larger views and you’ll realise why the naturalists are all sighing.

Pre-storm image from Google Maps

The carnage this afternoon, 19 Feb 2011

Eventually we’ll post more photos up in Habitatnews and I’ll say lucky Lekowala brought his camera along. For now, just so you know the damage is viewable from the road and an area with canopy cover is larger than a gap, it’s a clearing.

See “Storm flattens section of Mandai forest,” by Grace Chua. The Straits Times, 19 Feb 2011.