Talk:Chek Jawa
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Please note that anybody can claim to have discovered Chek Jawa by just being ignorant of it at first. A better term to use is "when I first visited Chek Jawa". Nobody could claim to have discovered Chek Jawa. Perhaps only by the woman from Java of whom Chek Jawa is purportedly named after. Anyway, there has been a house/kampung there for the longest time.
The real 'discoverer' of Chek Jawa is Joseph Lai (http://www.eart-h.com/), a former NParks officer who regularly guide school students to acquaint them of the flora and fauna of Pulau Ubin. When he learnt that Tanjung Chek Jawa was to be part of a major reclaimation exercise in that area, he brought it up to the attention of the public and ministry during a public forum. From then on, more people got to know about Chek Jawa and the rich biodiversity it offered. It is a shame that our local scientific community did not even raise a squeak of Ubin's rich coastline when surveying was done for the reclamation. (The government had actually indicted them by saying that "researchers find no value (reason) in not going ahead with the reclamation project" (or words to that effect) What have these researchers been doing all this while? Can we trust them when they claim to know anything about the biodiversity of a nature spot in Singapore? From my experience, they are often more eager to claim credit than do the actual work. Notice the number of eggheads that rushed to front interviews and such when the Chek Jawa saga was at its peak. Similarly, anybody who has been attributed as 'discoverer' of Chek Jawa shud make clear his or her role. Else, it demeans the good work of such individuals as Joseph Lai, who put his job on the line defending the demise of Chek Jawa's mudflats. Joseph Lai's role is well documented by the main dailies (eg. Straits Times) of Singapore. (See http://chekjawa.nus.edu.sg/articles/defer/14.htm) - 01:22, January 24, 2007 TC Lai
