The Climate Conversations Podcast: Singapore’s fight to protect the endangered straw-headed bulbul
The beautiful song of the straw-headed bulbul makes them a prime target for poachers in the region.
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The Climate Conversations podcast heads outdoors in search of a beloved songbird – the straw-headed bulbul. Fewer than 1,700 of these birds remain in the wild worldwide, largely due to habitat loss and poaching.
Julie Yoo meets the co-chairs of the Straw-headed Bulbul Working Group, Low Bing Wen from the National Parks Board and Alfred Chia from Nature Society Singapore, to find out more about the conservation efforts to save these birds.
Low Bing Wen:
The biggest threat by far is probably trapping for the caged-bird trade ... Around Southeast Asia there's still a very high demand for keeping these birds ... in captivity.
The price of a single individual on some ... bird markets has risen by 10 times in the last 10 years to around US$2,000.
Alfred Chia:
In surrounding regions like Kalimantan, Thailand and probably Malaysia too, it's quite bad to the point that they are almost driven to extinction ... and you seldom get to hear them or see them as much as you do in Singapore.
Jump to these key moments:
- 2:15 Unique characteristics of the song
- 4:17 Biggest threats
- 6:23 Singapore's conservation efforts
- 10:00 Challenges with breeding in captivity
- 12:03 Ideal locations for spotting the straw-headed bulbul
Source: CNA/ta
