In May 2025, A Rocha Singapore became A Rocha's first national organization in Southeast Asia!
Can cities be more than just places for people? Can a metropolis be a shared home where both biodiversity and humanity flourish? A Rocha Singapore is dedicated to researching and monitoring the poorly understood urban ecosystem, its diversity and ecology, so as to drive meaningful conservation action that tropical cities can adopt and practice, thereby restoring and building our intertwined relationship with creation.
Protecting Singapore’s Biodiversity
Informed and inspired by faith, we aim to advance conservation in Singapore by partnering with local communities to conduct rigorous research that translates evidence into action for people and biodiversity.
Dr Shawn Lum, 18th S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore, gives his lecture “Singapore, Nature and a World Reimagined.” Dr Lum leads A Rocha Singapore’s Conservation Science and serves on ARSG’s Board of Directors.
A Rocha Singapore’s research agenda and conservation focus:
• Build on Singapore’s matrix of wild and adjacent urban green spaces
• Build scientific knowledge
• Create functional, diverse urban ecosystems that are enriched by and also enrich adjacent natural systems
• Provide opportunities for people to become more connected with creation
• Model biodiversity enhancement efforts and design strategies on private development
The conservation science team (from right): Evi Syariffudin, Dr Theresa Su, Nadia Chang, James Khoo and Mel Ong.
The Bloom & Buzz Project
Our first project is a pollinator-focused permaculture garden pilot project and pollinator education programme within the Kovan-Hougang heartland for the conservation of native bees and the transformation of lives through community. A project supported by SG Eco Fund, and in partnership with The Helping Hand.
A female Woodborer Bee Lithurgus sp. 1 gathers pollen from an okra flower, Abelmoschus esculentus at the Bloom & Buzz project.
2026
Zestin Soh, Melissa Ong, Yu Jun Lim, John Ascher (Feb 2026)
First record of an adventive hylaeine bee in Southeast Asia: The Australian Hylaeus albonitens (Cockerell) in Singapore (Hymenoptera: Colletidae). Journal of Melittology 142: DOI:10.17161/jom.vi142.24935
2023
Ho BC & MWS Ong (2023) Desmodium tortuosum (Fabaceae), a non-indigenous species new to Singapore. Nature in Singapore 16: e2023075. DOI: 10.26107/NIS-2023-0075
2017
Subjects identified by: Kelvin K. P. Lim & Law Ing Sind. Contributors: Andrew Tay, Melissa Ong & Prarthini Selveindran (Aug 2017) Greenhouse frogs at Clementi Woods. Singapore Biodiversity Records 2017: 103-104 ISSN 2345-7597