Word of Mouth: From Wild Singapore to Wild Arabia - Stories from the Front Lines of Conservation by Dr Benjamin Lee
Lecture Fee Per Session
$20 for STGS or AREU members
$30 for non-members of STGS or AREU
$30 for members of the public (limited time promotional rate)
Lecture Duration
2 hours
Lecture Language
English
Date and Time
Friday, 18 September 2026, 14:00 PM - 16:00 PM [English]
LEARN Activity Bucket
C - Physical/Virtual Lectures
LEARN Category
1 - Content Knowledge
Training Venue
73 Dunlop St, #03-01, Singapore 209401
Please note that there is no lift or escalator in the building
Additional Information
Upon completion of the lecture, a Statement of Attendance (SOA) will be issued to you
Lecture Synopsis & Talking Points
Singapore is a city that defies expectations. In one of the world's most densely built urban environments, which wildlife species thrive, and how do they do it?
Dr Benjamin Lee has spent over three decades at this intersection of wildlife science and the places people live, from leading operations and research at the National Parks Board, to spearheading rewilding efforts at the Royal Commission for AlUla in Saudi Arabia. In both worlds, the people who tell the stories matter as much as the scientists.
Join us to explore:
How the wildlife of Singapore tells some of the most compelling conservation stories in the world;
What "City in Nature" means beyond the slogan, including the wildlife corridors, species monitoring programmes, and active rewilding that make Singapore a global model studied by conservation scientists worldwide;
What rewilding looks like at a radically different scale: how raptors, Arabian leopards, and a landscape bearing the imprint of successive civilisations stretching back millennia in AlUla are shaping a new chapter in global conservation;
Why a small island is a paradise for nature-guiding and where you can encounter some of the world's most superlative reptiles in a single morning's walk; and
How Tourist Guides can contribute to the conservation front and how to supercharge their knowledge of nature for guiding.
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About the Trainer
Dr Benjamin Lee
Conservation Biologist and
Co-Author of Wild Singapore
Conservation biologist Dr Benjamin Lee joined National Parks Board in 2000 and spent over two decades shaping the city-state's approach to nature reserve and wildlife management — leading research on bats, macaques, wild boars, and urban ecology, and serving as Director of Wildlife Management Research in his last posting. During that time he co-authored Wild Singapore, represented Singapore at various multilateral environmental agreement meetings, and contributed to the Singapore Red Data Book and the first National Species Action Plan for the Critically Endangered straw-headed bulbul.
Since 2023, Ben has been based in AlUla, Saudi Arabia, where he serves as Director of Research and Advisory, Wildlife and Natural Heritage at the Royal Commission for AlUla — one of the world's most ambitious landscape-scale rewilding programmes. His work spans habitat regeneration in hyper-arid desert, geological research, wildlife monitoring, and protected area management across northern Saudi Arabia.
Ben holds a PhD in Biodiversity Management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent, where his doctoral research focused on the urban ecology of bats in Singapore. He is a member of multiple IUCN Species Survival Commission specialist groups and also serves on the Large-Scale Conservation Areas Task Force of the World Commission on Protected Areas. His lifelong passion for natural history led to his election as a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London. His work has been featured in the Straits Times, Channel NewsAsia, and the Smithsonian Channel. In his free time, he birds madly and enjoys mountain-trekking.