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Speaker 1: Testing testing, Yes, perfect, Okay, if you want to tell me,

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Speaker 1: just describe where you are. So we're walking through the

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Speaker 1: rail corridor right now. We're kind of going deeper. You

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Speaker 1: don't really see the highway anymore, but you can still

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Speaker 1: kind of hear the traffic through the shroud of trees,

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Speaker 1: and on the other side of the path it's completely

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Speaker 1: just wild forest. You just see the slouette against the light.

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Speaker 1: So at night, this whole thing is completely dark. It

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Speaker 1: is for nocturnal wildlife. So we're kind of walking through

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Speaker 1: complete darkness. And if we try to be quiet and

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Speaker 1: we stop, you can kind of hear beyond the traffic

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Speaker 1: the sound of mating crickets, the google of a scream. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: just a moment of silence in a forest in the

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Speaker 1: middle of thing before It's a rainy Thursday evening. My

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Speaker 1: producer Young Young and I are standing on the rail corridor,

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Speaker 1: a twenty four kilometer former railroad that's been converted into

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Speaker 1: a trail running smack through the middle of Singapore. The

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Speaker 1: British started building this railway in nineteen hundred, when Singapore

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Speaker 1: was still just a colony. For over a century, the

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Speaker 1: railway connected Singapore to Malaysia surviving through World Walls and

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Speaker 1: the two countries Maja separation and independence. But before twenty eleven,

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Speaker 1: this land still belonged to the Malaysian government, so as

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Speaker 1: the city state developed into neighborhoods of office towers, condo buildings,

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Speaker 1: this area remained largely untouched. Then in twenty eleven, after

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Speaker 1: a series of land disputes and negotiations, the railway land

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Speaker 1: was finally returned to Singapore. So all of a sudden

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Speaker 1: you had this long, winding strip of land, almost wilderness

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Speaker 1: in some areas, running through the heart of a highly

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Speaker 1: developed island. And this was a huge dilemma. What should

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Speaker 1: Singapore do with the land? Why come in to unswer

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Speaker 1: that Hello, Hello, we'll need no commen. Hi. My name

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Speaker 1: is Commin and I'm a flora's ecologist by training and

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Speaker 1: her friend. Oh I am ko. I'm the current chairman

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Speaker 1: for the Marine Conservation Group of Esis NSS or Nature

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Speaker 1: Society Singapore, is the oldest conservation group in the city state,

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Speaker 1: and in twenty eleven, when the railway land was returned

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Speaker 1: to Singapore, it submitted an audacious proposal to the government

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Speaker 1: to suggest that you know, since this land was going

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Speaker 1: to be returned to Singapore, or why not, you know,

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Speaker 1: keep the whole stretch as a nature corridor, a green

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Speaker 1: corridor not just for nature but also for people to enjoy.

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Speaker 1: This might not sound like a big deal, but it

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Speaker 1: definitely was ambitious and quite unprecedented in a tiny island

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Speaker 1: like Singapore, simply because here land is extremely scarce. To

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Speaker 1: put things in perspective, Singapore's land area is smaller than

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Speaker 1: the size of New York City, but this railway is

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Speaker 1: ten times longer than the High Line in NYC. For

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Speaker 1: conservationists like Kungmen, never in their wildest dreams could they

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Speaker 1: imagine their proposal succeeding, but it worked. Instead of puzzling

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Speaker 1: out the land for real estate development, the railway has

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Speaker 1: since been kept as a green spine, largely untouched for

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Speaker 1: over a century. The rail line connects almost every natural

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Speaker 1: habitat you can find in Singapore, from mangroves and marshland

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Speaker 1: to forest and grassland. The railway also spans the entire

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Speaker 1: breadth of the nation, cutting through some of the city's

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Speaker 1: most exclusive neighborhoods, from the Mundai Mangrove and Mudflett in

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Speaker 1: the north close to Malaysia all the way to the

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Speaker 1: Central Business District in the south. It's a continuous highway

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Speaker 1: for wildlife and people. So this week, can you tell

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Speaker 1: us more about the potential like plants and animals that

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Speaker 1: we were in concer on this plant. Um. Yeah, So

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Speaker 1: if you came on a morning, you would very high trance.

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Speaker 1: You will hear the stock headed boo boo. Internationally, it's

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Speaker 1: critically endangered because in other places in the region, like

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Speaker 1: in Indonesia and Malaysia, they would get poltures who captured

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Speaker 1: for the songbird trade. So it's only in Singapore where

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Speaker 1: you have a pretty decent population of the stark headed

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Speaker 1: boo boo. So and and and the call is very melodious,

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Speaker 1: like you can you can probably google google it and play.

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Speaker 1: The call is unmistakable. Yeah, it took Singapore more than

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Speaker 1: half a century to get here. In nineteen sixty seven,

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Speaker 1: just two years after the city state proclaimed it's independent,

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Speaker 1: the government's environmental vision was a fifty two word slogan

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Speaker 1: Garden City, which was all about tidy It. An imaginative

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Speaker 1: concept by the Prime Minister mister Le Kwan Yu in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, raised a variety of such subjects for

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Speaker 1: urgent attention, which led to the study and creation of

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Speaker 1: a Garden City Action Committee by the Ministry of National Development.

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Speaker 1: Singapore's founder Lee Kuan Yu wanted a manicured approach to

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Speaker 1: nature to team the wild, not to coexist with it.

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Speaker 1: That attitude towards nature has come at a cost. Building

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Speaker 1: skyscrapers and transforming the city into a wealthy, futuristic metropolis

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Speaker 1: has meant sacrificing acres of forest and wetlands. From two

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Speaker 1: thousand to twenty twenty, Singapore lost the equivalent of nearly

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Speaker 1: a thousand football fields worth of tree cover, according to

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Speaker 1: Global Force Watch. But now the island wants to bring

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Speaker 1: back the wilderness to build a city in nature instead

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Speaker 1: of an artificial garden. Come and thinks that among all things,

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Speaker 1: the pandemic might have helped shift mindsets. Actually sold everybody

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Speaker 1: was loved in Singapore. The only place you could go

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Speaker 1: with the parks. How many parks do we have? Not

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Speaker 1: so many? And if there was the loss of one

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Speaker 1: part like it made a lot of difference, right, So

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Speaker 1: everybody started to take notice of what was going on

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Speaker 1: on the land in Singapore. So Chao has another theory.

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Speaker 1: In his opinion, this is a generational mindset shift as

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Speaker 1: Singapore's economy progresses. I suppose there is a switching mindset

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Speaker 1: of people living in Singapore. So so when we first started,

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Speaker 1: all of the seventies, eighties and all, so, Singaporeans are

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Speaker 1: just focusing on how to sub ends meet bringing food

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Speaker 1: to the table. Whereas as we progress, I think the citizens,

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Speaker 1: the people living in Singapore, they them for something that's better,

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Speaker 1: the quality of life to be better, so so they

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Speaker 1: start to appreciate nature. You know, they have time for

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Speaker 1: detton it's compared to the past. And that's all of

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Speaker 1: those major factors switching in the mindset of people. The

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Speaker 1: rail corridor may be one of Singapore's biggest conservation success stories.

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Speaker 1: On weekdays, before and after the work day and on

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Speaker 1: weekends from dawn to dusk, the trail is full of hikers, birdwatchers,

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Speaker 1: runners and bikers, a full cross section of Singaporean society

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Speaker 1: from kids to the elderly, who are out and about

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Speaker 1: on the trail. But common and Chaos say more could

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Speaker 1: still be done. Nature Society and other civil society groups

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Speaker 1: are working with the Singapore government to rewild more parts

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Speaker 1: of the corridor and to hopefully return the landscape to

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Speaker 1: its original rainforest rewilding sort of brings a concept that

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Speaker 1: you know you can just let nature run its course,

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Speaker 1: let the trees grow naturally, just stick in and be

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Speaker 1: inspired by how nature can can grow on its own.

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Speaker 1: In Singapore, Selena Shoot for Bloomberg News