LOVE Nature

When I was guiding at Semakau Landfill, I had thought that it would be nice to have some short, impactful, and yet easy-to-remember acronym that I could use at my debrief for my participants. Finally, about half a year ago, I came up with LOVE Nature. Do feel free to use this in your debrief if you find it useful :)

L - Learn about nature
You can effectively protect and care for nature only if you understand it, or else you may end up doing more harm! You can read nature books, visit online resources (e.g. WildSingapore, blogs etc), and join guided nature walks (Semakau, BWV, CJ etc). For the Naked Hermit Crabs, L also stands for - Leave all nature things behind, but leave no man-made things behind. E.g. Don't collect shells, or the hermit crabs will have to run around naked! And take your rubbish with you when you leave the nature places.

O - Open up and share with others
Share with your friends what you've learned. Put it up in a blog, or invite friends to join nature walks. On top of sharing what can be found at our nature places and how nice they are, please also share about how we can protect them. E.g. The litter such as plasic bags) you throw in nature places may be mistaken as food by the animals, and they may choke and die after eating them. There is also the problem of collecting and poaching from our nature places. If more and more people collect and poach, eventually our future generations will not get to experience seeing and touching these wonderful living things in their natural environment.

V - Volunteer
Play a more active role! There are many ways you can volunteer. You can become a nature guide, or help to monitor seagrass and coral reefs, or help to plant trees, or help to set up and manage exhibitions etc. Visit WildSingapore.com for more info!

E - Express your views through the proper channels
Singaporeans like to complain, and thus when the authorities get too many complaints, they have to do something. So do send in compliments about how much you like our nature places to remain the way they are! And if you disagree with certain things the authorities are doing, express you views through the proper channel. You can send to http://www.reach.gov.sg/, or send to the forum on the papers.

So bascially, what we hope our visitors will do after attending our walks is very simple - just LOVE Nature!