Why Is The Pahang Government Logging Down A Jungle As Huge As Cyberjaya?

KUALA ROMPIN: A jungle area the size of Cyberjaya is being logged in the middle of one of Pahang’s most important forests to make way for possible rubber plantations. Earmarked by the Pahang government, some 3,000ha of the Lesong permanent forest Reserve is currently being cleared, with an untold number of logs being taken out of the jungle every day.

The Pahang Forestry Department defends the move as legal, saying it has been approved by the state’s executive council and only affects areas known as “degraded forest”.

At least a third of Lesong’s forests have been deemed as poor in timber quality – the reason the Pahang government says it is allowing it to be logged before being replanted. Pahang Forestry Department director Datuk Mohd Paiz Kamaruzaman said these poor quality forest areas would be converted to timber plantation sites.

“Part of the Lesong forest reserve is considered poor based on its standing volume composition (referring to how much wood in the trees can actually be sold). “Hence, a decision was made by the Pahang state government to convert part of Lesong that is poor in standing volume composition into commercial timber plantations,” he told The Star via e-mail.

Forest researcher Lim Teck Wyn was sceptical about the Pahang Forestry Department’s claim that the loggers were only clearing degraded parts of the forest. “They have not provided evidence that it is a degraded forest. A heavily degraded area means there would be very few logs to salvage,” he said.

Pertubuhan Perlindungan Kha­zanah Alam (Association for the Protection of Natural Heritage of Malaysia or Peka) president Puan Sri Shariffa Sabrina Syed Akil said there was no telling what might happen to Lesong’s ecosystem in the long run. She said although the state government had the right to do whatever it pleased with its forests, such actions were “morally wrong”.

Environmentalists are warning that continued logging and development of Lesong may lead to a substantial decline in animals and plants already on the list of threatened species.

Some years ago, tigers and elephants roamed freely in the area just above the wildlife-rich Endau-Rompin National Park, home to much of Malaysia’s flora and fauna. With the logging, the animals have been forced further into unlogged areas, getting squeezed into ever smaller habitats.

CLEARING of 3,000ha of the Lesong permanent reserve forest in Pahang refers. It is absurd for the authorities to say that the forest reserved is being cleared because of poor quality timber. In the first place, it is gazetted as forest reserve. It is gazetted as a forest reserve, not because of its timber but because of its ecosystem.

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According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species, 686 plants and 225 animals in Malaysia are at risk of extinction.

There are now only about 300 tigers in peninsular Malaysia – in Belum-Temenggor, Taman Negara and the Endau-Rompin Complex, which includes Lesong. Any decline in numbers would lead to a real threat of extinction.

Environmental consultant Dylan Jefri Ong said the large-scale uniform logging – also known as clearcutting – that was going on now would have a destructive effect on the forest ecosystem. “Some of these would be loss and fragmentation of wildlife habitats, leading to displaced animal populations, as well as the loss of rare or endangered plant life,” he said.

Ong said the warning was clear: “Stop the logging or these endangered species will lose their habitats.” He said the logging was exposing more and more of the forest areas to what is known as the “edge effect”.

That is when the edges of the forest where logging has laid the land bare get exposed to wind and sunlight, which forces animals like tigers away, shrinking their habitat.

Elephants, however, were attracted to such areas, said elephant expert Associate Prof Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of Nottingham University Malaysia. He said they were drawn to the fresh shoots in these areas. “If these areas were to become plantations later, such as if timber latex clones were planted there, it could result in human-wildlife conflicts,” he said.

Timber latex clones are rubber trees that provide both latex and rubber wood for furniture.

The Star team saw elephant tracks and dung along some of the logging roads and Prof Campos-Arceiz said there was a danger that the logging sites scattered across the Lesong landscape would grow in size, affecting the elephant habitats.

He was also worried that the logging roads would also make it easier for poachers to get into the forest. “Once you have something like this, it will start growing. It’s a big mistake,” he said.