Students from the Faculty of Science - Sean Ng Jing Wen (Year 2), Toh Wei Yang (Year 2), Lee Si Rong, Janelle (Year 2), and Low Ying Xin, Anna (Year 1) - together with Engineering student Lu Zonghan (Year 2) embarked on a community project with the Singapore Wildcat Action Group (SWAG) in October 2020. This wildlife and biodiversity of Singapore project came under the Seeds of Good Programme (SOGP) which enables students to design and execute real-life community projects to bring positive and meaningful impacts.
As SWAG wanted a documentary on the leopard cat to kick-start their Love Our Leopard Cat campaign, the team set out to film footage of the leopard cat and interviews with experts of the leopard cat and wildlife conservation in Singapore.
Apart from passionate parties of wildlife conservation in Singapore, the team also approached the owner of a Bengal Cat Boutique to discuss more on how the demand for domestic Bengal Cats correlates to the propagation of illegal wildlife trade of the Leopard Cat. While the owner was initially concerned on how the documentary might portray him and his business, the team still managed to secure an interview with him as they were sincerely interested to document his perspective of the topic.
The team then practised their storytelling and editing skills to splice the various pieces of recordings together to form a coherent narrative that explained why leopard cats are critically endangered in Singapore without sounding accusatory. SWAG commended the team for the professionally produced documentary which will be very useful for the community partners as they continue to advocate for leopard cat conservation in Singapore.
1:00p.m on 30 January 2021: It was go-time for the screening of their documentary. Despite being new to event organisation, the team managed to publicise and organise booths for SWAG and Death By Man during their event for participants to learn more about their work.
The team had many takeaways from the project, ranging from scriptwriting and filming to event planning and networking. This rewarding experience even inspired one of the team members to apply for an internship with NParks Conservation and Wildlife Management Department to learn more on conservation efforts to help the biodiversity in Singapore. It is projects like these that truly impart NUS students transferrable skills that cannot be picked up from an academic curriculum.
Video documentary courtesy of The Last Wildcat of Singapore
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