Nee Soon project overview 
3 
Management concerns 
The Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest constitutes part of the Central Catchment 
Nature Reserve, administered primarily by the National Parks Board. The Central 
Catchment Nature Reserve covers approximately 3,100 hectares (31 km 2 ), of which 
approximately 2,600 hectares are land area and 500 hectares are made up of the surfaces 
of the MacRitchie, Upper Peirce, Lower Peirce, and Upper Seletar Reservoirs. The 
land owner is the Public Utilities Board and the land manager is the National Parks 
Board, but several other government organisations also have limited jurisdiction, 
causing some complexity in the management of the reserve and the swamp. 
Part of the lower catchment is occupied by two firing ranges under the 
management of the Ministry of Defence and an old disused firing range, now reverted 
to secondary forest, once existed 0.8 km to the southeast. A water supply pipeline, 
partly above ground and partly below, runs through the forest, with a grassy side-table 
for maintenance. 
Public access to the nature reserve is limited to designated trails, none of 
which intrudes into the area of freshwater swamp forest. Visits to the freshwater 
swamp forest, whether by scientists, educational groups or individuals, are managed 
by permits. Continuous patrols are not feasible, but legal action against those who 
infringe regulations can be taken under the Parks and Trees Act (2006). 
Past research as well as management have tended to treat the Nee Soon freshwater 
swamp forest catchment as a single unit without internal differentiation. In fact the Nee 
Soon stream catchment covers approximately 479 hectares (4.79 km 2 ), but the area 
exhibiting swampy conditions is much smaller. The swampy area is approximately 50 
hectares (0.5 km 2 ) but cannot be defined exactly because every flood and every dry 
period differs in extent and duration, streams may become silted, or change course. 
Criteria for differentiating swampy areas do not exist at this microgeographical scale. 
Singapore is deeply conscious of the potential impacts of climate change, 
including its impacts on biodiversity, and of the role of vegetation as a first line of defence 
in mitigating impacts (National Climate Change Secretariat, 2016). The National Parks 
Board therefore has an important part in climate and microclimate mitigation through 
the management of natural and planted vegetation. This is complementary to its role 
in the conservation of biological diversity at ecosystem, community, species and 
population levels, including national obligations under the Convention on Biological 
Diversity. Recognising the significance of Nee Soon freshwater swamp forest as the 
home of a large proportion of Singapore’s native flora and fauna, managers of the 
Central Catchment Nature Reserve have been deeply committed to the conservation 
of this unique ecosystem. 
Management initiatives and responses are constrained by shortage of technical 
information and the granularity of the information. A biodiversity survey of the Bukit 
Timah and Central Catchment Nature Reserves (covering Nee Soon) in 1993-1997 
