The 19th century saw the golden age of natural history and expeditionary sciences in Europe and the United States, where numerous ships embarked on journeys around the world in pursuit of exploration and scientific discoveries. Famous examples include HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin voyaged to South America and beyond, later inspiring his theory of evolution. Amongst the earliest of many expeditions and vessels that visited Singapore was the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). Also known as the US Ex. Ex. or the Wilkes Expedition, it achieved several scientific and navigational milestones. For the first time in history, more than 1,500 miles of the Antarctica coastline was charted, demonstrating without doubt that Antarctica was a continent. In the expedition’s gruelling journey that circumnavigated the globe, tens of thousands of natural history objects were collected, leaving behind a legacy of meticulous documentation of biodiversity that eventually formed the foundational collection of the Smithsonian Institution. The US Ex. Ex. made a brief stop in Singapore, arriving on 19 February 1842 before departing one week later on 26 February 1842. The crew marveled at the cultural and natural sights of the bustling Singapore, collecting many zoological and botanical specimens that are now housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Commercial agriculture constituted much of Singapore’s economic activity during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. A variety of cash crops were cultivated on the island during this period, including gambier, pepper, nutmeg, coffee, coconut and pineapple. Between 1870 and 1890, rubber plants were experimented with in an effort to enhance their commercial viability. Fueled by the increased use of electricity and automobiles, the demand for rubber increased rapidly. On 11 June 1877, 11 rubber seedlings from the Kew Gardens in England were sent to the Botanic Gardens in Singapore, where the first rubber trees in Singapore were planted. The rise of rubber cultivation can be traced to the efforts of famed botanist Henry Nicholas Ridley—the first director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens—whose unrelenting fervour led to breakthroughs in how the latex was extracted, thereby revolutionalising the rubber industry in the Malay Peninsula. Known as the “father of the rubber industry”, Ridley also had a keen interest in animals, and actively collected and studied a wide range of fauna, including insects and reptiles.

The Second World War was a turbulent time in world history. On 15 February 1942, the British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese. Thousands of Allied soldiers were taken prisoner, and amongst them was 26 year-old Thomas Graham Howarth. A specialist in butterflies and moths, Howarth was responsible for preserving the most important parts of the collections at the Natural History Museum in London at the onset of war. He enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was posted to Singapore in 1941. Howarth was tasked with helping combat malaria on the island, and his efforts contributed to Singapore becoming malaria-free. After Singapore fell and he became a prisoner of war, he collected insects to stave off boredom and keep up his morale. Over the next six months, Howarth secretly amassed a collection of over 1,500 butterflies and moths and hid them in cigarette tins. He was later transferred to Korea as a forced labourer before liberation in 1945.

The report also recommended the gradual closure of quarries in the vicinity of Bukit Timah, and provided impetus for the enactment of the Nature Reserves Act of 1951. For the first time in Singapore’s history, nature reserves were accorded legislative protection. Today, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve remains home to the rarest flora and fauna on the island.

Although many localities have been lost or changed over time, specimens once collected from these places have survived. These can offer us glimpses or clues of what these places may have looked like in the past.

While it is impossible to restore lost biodiversity and their habitats to their original state, the importance of conservation is increasingly recognised today. Local species recovery programmes have seen successes, for instance in the case of the Raffles’s banded langur. Species once thought to have been lost have also been rediscovered, such as the Selangor mud snake. These successes demonstrate how historical specimens and data can continue to augment conservation efforts, by providing baselines for understanding biodiversity.