Laws

Also in 1975, the Parks and Trees Act was introduced. According to the NParks, the Parks and Trees Act “is an Act to provide for planting, maintenance and conservation of trees and plants within national parks, nature reserves, tree conservation areas, heritage road green buffers and other specified areas, and for matters connected therewith.” It also made it compulsory that in any land development, an area of land along roadsides, within car parks and housing estates was to be set aside so that trees could be planted.

Nparks also stated that “on 2 August 1991, in an effort to control indiscriminate felling of mature trees, two areas in the South Central and Eastern parts of Singapore were gazetted as Tree Conservation Areas (TCA)”, “trees with girth more than one metre measured half a metre from the ground” are residing in these areas are then prevented from being cut down . Total area of TCA is about 4900 hectares.

(source: Nparks)

According to part VII of National Parks Act 1996, shown in the website of the Attorney General’s Chamber, once the area has been gazetted as a nature park or nature reserves, any “activity which causes or may cause alteration, damage or destruction to any plant or animal or property” will be prohibited and will be considered an offence. This is how all our 5 nature reserves are conserved by law.