By Katherine Tham
Hi my name is Isabelle Chew, I’m currently volunteering with the Eco School’s team. I saw Sri KDU International School and I’m very impressed, I can see that all the students are doing a lot of projects that are actually going to help save the environment. So I can see that all the students really involve themselves in the Eco School’s club; all of you are doing a lot of things to promote environmental awareness even in the students through the recycling bins in each classroom. I think it’s very good because students use a lot of paper in classes, right? So you can collect it veryeasily and contribute to saving the environment. I see that your Eco Mural is very nice, it stands out because if you ever walk past, you can see, ‘Oh look it’s an Eco Mural right there!’ So it definitely promotes awareness. Yeah you are all doing very well, keep it up!
Hi I’m Joleyn from WWF, I’m with the Education for Sustainable Development team. What I want to say is that the most important thing is to take the first step and to move forward after that. Just like what I shared with you just now; ‘Today you must be better than yesterday and tomorrow to be better than today.’ This is how you must go forward with your Eco School’s program. I mean, you just started and there’s always room for improvement, we’re not going to judge you for slip ups or anything. The thing in mind is how you’re going to move forward in your Eco School, and I believe you’re making great progress!
Hi I’m Jessie Chew, I’m the Education Manager for the Eco School’s program. First of all I think the school has done a pretty good job on promoting sustainable lifestyle by placing recycling boxes in the classroom, and then to see if the students are interested in trying to promote that to their friends and families as well. It’s not going to be an easy journey, sometimes you have to take one step forward and two steps backward. I think it’s when you add all those little steps is where you’ll get somewhere.
Protected areas are dissected areas, there are actually different types; fully protected and just semi protected. These fully protected ones are fully protected and nobody can touch this area such as our National Parks. So when you’re talking about endangered species, most of the time they live in forests; protected areas mean there’ll be no human interferences, so protected areas are very important for these endangered species because it’s their habitat and the land they use to hunt for their food. For example the tigers, compared to humans, we build one house, 25 by 70 and we can stay forever in it. However, tigers their habitat is very large, it’s huge! So if there are not enough protected areas that means the tiger population will reduce, that’s why the population of tigers is reducing because their habitat is getting smaller and smaller. Let’s say we have this area here, and we have two male tigers so if there’s not enough space, they’ll fight for territory. So, two becomes one. Because that area is just enough for one tiger, that’s how population drops in numbers. They don’t have enough space to roam. When the hectors become smaller it means there’s less food to be hunted so that also reduces the population. So besides donating, my colleagues in the protected area team are actually increasing awareness of the importance of protected areas, how can we increase the awareness of protected areas is actually to increase the visitation of our protected areas to show to our government that these protected areas are actually very valuable besides only safeguarding the endangered species and serves as a recreational area. If you go there, you know you feel relaxed? We should protect that sanctuary! It also needs to be preserved for educational purposes so that increases the value of protected areas and means the government will save it as a fully protected area. This is essential because some of the policy makers do not think that the endangered species or the tigers are important enough to save that particular place and its environment.
