The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-23)

A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 , 2021

corridors so that every resident

will live within a 10-minute walk

of a park by 2030.

“It doesn’t have to be a con-

crete jungle,” said Anbarasi Boo-

pal, the co-CEO of Animal Con-

cerns Research and Education

Society, Singapore’s wildlife res-

cue center. “Singapore has a huge

potential to be a new model for

where greenery, animals and peo-

ple can learn to live in close

proximity.”

Otters are not the only animals

that have returned. Wild boars

and monkeys have also started

appearing in urban spaces. In

February, a w ild boar jumped out

of a bush and attacked a woman,

dragging her for a meter before a

food delivery driver scared it with

a bicycle bell. In June, a family of

monkeys was spotted scaling a

condominium building.

As animals encroach on metro-

politan spaces, and developers

dig into forests, Boopal’s organi-

zation has created a wildlife man-

agement team to respond to alter-

cations between animals and

resi dents and teach people how

to handle conflicts.

“There will be resistance. We

are so used to having everything

presented to us so nicely,” she

said. “I tell people, we cannot

train the animals. I cannot train

the monkey. But I can train you.”

[email protected]

mounted during the pandemic,

when lockdown restrictions kept

people home and gave the ani-

mals free rein in the city.

Last year, after a string of otter

attacks on koi ponds, one critic

wrote a letter to the Straits Times

newspaper to call for the animals

to be shot with rubber bullets.

The demand proved divisive, and

even Prime Minister Lee Hsien

Loong, who encountered a family

of otters frolicking in the yard of

the president’s official residence,

took a stand. Singaporeans “must

find ways to coexist and thrive

with our local flora and fauna,” he

wrote in a Facebook post.

For otter experts, the critics are

missing the point. Higher fencing

and sturdier gates are a small

price to pay to keep the otters out

of areas where they are not wel-

come.

Singapore’s otters are the envy

of researchers around the world,

who sometimes work for years

without seeing an otter in the

wild. They are also testament to

Singapore’s reforestation and

a nti-pollution efforts.

When the otters resettled here

in 2014, they returned to clean

waterways with schools of fish

untouched by predators for dec-

ades. The city has since imple-

mented an ambitious plan to

interweave green and urban

a reas, including creating wildlife

BY MARINA LOPES

IN SINGAPORE

S

tanding on a manhole

c over in downtown Singa-

pore, dodging double-

decker buses and motorcy-

cles, Marjorie Chong sniffs the air

and listens for squeaks. “Do you

hear that?” she asks.

Chong is searching for otters.

Pollution and deforestation

drove away Singapore’s otter pop-

ulation in the 1970s. But as the

country cleaned up its waters and

reforested land in recent years,

otters came back in full force,

integrating into urban spaces and

learning to navigate one of the

world’s most cosmopolitan cities.

Today, to the annoyance of

some and the joy of others, the

island is home to more than

10 otter romps, or families.

In the Marina Bay area, known

for architecturally audacious

h otels and for one-bedroom

apartments that sell for $1.8 mil-

lion, otters bop in the water and

the crunch of fish bones echoes

along the boardwalk. Using

drainpipes as highways, the car-

nivorous mammals traverse the

city, sometimes popping up in

rush-hour traffic, or racing

through university campuses.

Otters pushed out of the local

rivers and bays by rival families

dig homes between buildings.

They visit hospital lobbies and

condominium pools, hunting for

koi fish and drinking from foun-

tains. New families fight for ac-

cess to food and shelter, in battles

that are covered by the local

papers and dissected online.

As the otter population has

boomed, so has otter mania. Otter

watchers like Chong spend days

tracking the whereabouts of dif-

ferent families, documenting

their rivalries, love stories and

territorial clashes on social me-

dia.

“It’s like ‘Game of Thrones,’ ”

said Chong, a retired editor who

runs the Ottercity Facebook

group. “You realize everyone is

just trying to survive.”

On a recent day, Chong scoured

canals behind skyscrapers for

“Zouk Aunt,” an otter she had

been following for years. Zouk

Aunt first served as her family’s

“nanny,” chaperoning her sister’s

pups to swimming lessons and

walks, only to be shunned by the

group after the two females got

into a fight. Now a mother her-

self, she has to fend for her pups

in the financial district, while

avoiding the neighborhood’s rul-

ing family, the powerful Bishan

otters.

For weeks, Chong and a team

of volunteers, who call them-

selves otter watchers, helped

Zouk Aunt and her mate cross a

five-lane road into Marina Bay.

The volunteers pushed pedestri-

an crosswalk buttons on traffic

lights and waved down cars to

prevent the otters from being run

over during twice-daily hunting

trips.

The otter watchers have quick-

ly become experts, able to identify

an animal by a missing toenail or

clipped ear. They work with the

country’s parks department and

zoologists to help abandoned

pups return to their families, or

get injured animals medical at-

tention.

But not all residents are smit-

ten.

Lynette Foo, 32, was home with

her baby when she heard the

squeaks. Over a dozen otters wan-

dered past her house and feasted

on the 40 koi fish she kept in her

backyard pond, some of which

her father-in-law had been rais-

ing for decades.

“They were eating like they

were at a b uffet,” she said, adding

that the parent otters would blind

the fish with their claws first and

then let their pups catch them.

“They are becoming a nuisance.”

Frustr ation with the otters

The World

SYRIA

U.S. says strike killed

al-Qaeda leader

The U.S. military carried out

an airstrike on a senior al-Qaeda

leader in Syria along the Turkish

border in an operation that will

disrupt the terrorist

organization’s ability to plot

attacks against American

interests, defense officials said.

The Pentagon disclosed the

strike in a statement Friday

evening, saying it hit a leader

named Abdul Hamid al-Matar.

The strike was carried out with

an MQ-9 Reaper drone in the

town of Suluk, north of Raqqa,

said Army Maj. John Rigsbee, a

U.S. military spokesman.

Suluk was among the towns

that Turkish forces advanced into

in 2019, as Ankara attempted to

push out Kurdish forces. U.S.

troops had been in the region but

withdrew at the order of

President Donald Trump.

Rigsbee said that there was no

initial indication that the strike

caused any civilian casualties. He

said the strike had nothing to do

with an attack on U.S. troops on

Wednesday in Tanf, where the

U.S. military has maintained a

garrison with about 200 troops

along a highway that runs from

Damascus to Baghdad.

— Dan Lamothe

ISRAEL

6 Palestinian human

rights groups banned

Israel on Friday effectively

outlawed six leading Palestinian

human rights groups by

declaring them terrorist

organizations.

T he Defense Ministry said the

groups are secretly linked to the

Popular Front for the Liberation

of Palestine, a secular, left-wing

movement that has a political

party as well as an armed wing

that has carried out deadly

attacks against Israelis. Israel

and Western countries consider

the PFLP a terrorist organization.

The designated groups are

A l-Haq, a human rights group

founded in 1979; the Addameer

rights group; Defense for

Children International-Palestine;

the Bisan Center for Research

and Development; the Union of

Palestinian Women’s

Committees; and the Union of

Agricultural Work Committees.

Most of the targeted groups

document alleged human rights

violations by Israel as well as the

Palestinian Authority. The

declaration appeared to pave the

way for Israel to raid of fices, seize

assets, arrest staff and

criminalize any public

expressions of support.

Israeli and international rights

groups called the move an

assault on civil society. The

United States will seek more

information from Israel about

the designations, the State

Department said.

— Associated Press

U.N. relief effort thwarted by

Ethiopian airstrikes: Ethiopian

military airstrikes forced a

U nited Nations humanitarian

flight to abandon its landing in

the capital of the country’s Tigray

region, aid workers said, and a

government spokesman said

authorities were aware of the

inbound flight. It appeared to be

a sharp escalation in

intimidation tactics authorities

have used against aid workers

amid the year-long Tigray war.

Clash with Islamists leaves

2 officers dead in Pakistan:

Violent clashes erupted between

Pakistan’s security forces and

Islamist demonstrators in the

eastern city of Lahore, leaving at

least two police officers dead and

several protesters injured, a

police official and witnesses said.

The incident came as thousands

of Islamists launched their “long

march” from the city toward the

capital, Islamabad, demanding

that the government release Saad

Rizvi, the head of the outlawed

Tehrik-e-Labiak Pakistan party.

International aid to Syrians

being diverted, report says:

Syrian President Bashar al-

Assad’s government has diverted

at least $100 million in currency

from international aid money to

state coffers over the past two

years, benefiting from variations

in exchange rates, according to

research by the Center for

Strategic and International

Studies, a Washington-based

organization that focuses on

international public policy

issues. The currency

manipulation deprives Syrians,

most of them impoverished after

a decade of war, of much needed

funds. It also allows Damascus to

circumvent sanctions enforced

by Western countries that hold it

responsible for most of the war’s

atrocities. In response, the

United Nations acknowledged

that exchange rate fluctuations

have had “a relative impact” on

the effectiveness of some U.N.

programs in Syria.

— From news services

DIGEST

For t he otters of

Singapore, life is

once again going

swimmingly

City’s water cleanup and reforestation effort

have brought the creatures back in full force

SUHAIMI ABDULLAH/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES

Otters scan their surroundings in Singapore. In the background are the city’s Gardens by the Bay development and the Marina Bay Sands, with its Sky Park.

ABOVE: THEN CHIH WEY/XINHUA NEWS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES; BELOW: MARINA LOPES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

ABOVE: A “romp” of otters, nicknamed the “Zouk family,” crosses busy Penang Road at a

crosswalk in March. BELOW: Otter watcher Jeffery Teo snaps a photo. Some locals aren’t

s o fond of the animals, which have been known to raid fish ponds and cause a nuisance.