Thoughts on the Amended SINGAPORE WILDLIFE ACT

Originally posted Oct 2021
For additional reference:

• Straits Times article - Parliament: More protection for native wildlife, harsher penalties for offenders under amended law
• Singapore Wildlife Act 1965

In view of the renewing of wildlife acts and try getting the wildlife protected in a top-down manner. I love that part to penalise the intentional killing of wildlife, which includes bees. This means that Pest control is not allowed to indiscriminately kill any bees anymore! Because of this, many pest control companies have approached Nutrinest and request about learning how to humanely removing wild beehives. I can see the effects of the new acts but at the same time problems too! I think it is time to get the top-down and bottoms-up meet.

Many pest control would like to follow the act but they are not equipped with the knowledge and skill to properly handle bees.  With that, I am seeing more clients complaining about bees issues and when I investigate the physical bee colony I found that there are a lot more escape bee colonies.  this usually happened when the colony is being served by someone who could not manage the bees well.  With this, the strength of the colony is greatly reduced and chances of surviving are much lower. I have been helping to save such a colony but most of the time they dissolved after a period of time.  This is worst than exterminating cause a colony is double handled leaving both separate colonies to die slowly!

I would like to know what is the  plan to quickly bring up the service providers' knowledge and skill to handle wild bees properly?  Is there a guideline or standards established to ensure the wild bees are humanely managed?  If there is, where can the general public get on hold to it?

In the new acts, it is also mentioned that it is illegal to keep wildlife including bees without written approval from the Director General Wildlife Management.  For a better wild bee control, it is best to evenly distribute the colony population.  Hence, it is important to have more locations to relocate the rescued bee colonies.  Will the government prepared to release more sites to house all these rescued bee colonies? I am constantly looking for new site.  Capture and release will only satisfy in resolving a particular incident but not the root cause. I would like to suggest the idea of Nutrinest Total Wild Bee Managment and work with all the stakeholders to implement this. It will include educating the public, the service providers, and the authority in handling wild bees under different situation, and establishing standards and methods in managing the wild bees. 

May I ask how to get in touch with the Director of General Wildlife Management to work with him on all these?