Isabelle Lai and Edmund Ngo The Star 12 Jun 13;
PETALING JAYA: Conservationists have lauded the Perak Government for gazetting 18,866ha of forest in the Belum-Temengor Forest Complex (BTFC) as a permanent forest reserve.
The area, named the Amanjaya Forest Reserve, extends some 1.5km from either side of the East-West Highway. Around 130 million years old, the BTFC is made up of two forests 1,175sq km of the Royal Belum State Park to the north and 1,477sq km of the Temengor Forest Reserve to the south.
It is older than Brazil's Amazon rainforest and is home to an astounding variety of flora and fauna.
It is one of two sites in Malaysia where all 10 hornbill species can be found. Mentri Besar Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir said the move was part of a master plan to provide a suitable area for wildlife to move about the forest complex.
Plans to rehabilitate the area were in the pipeline, including reforestation programmes, he said.
“Planting new trees there is also part of fulfilling the state Barisan Nasional's election pledge to plant at least one million trees,” he said.
The Amanjaya Forest Reserve, gazetted on May 9, was previously earmarked as a development corridor along the highway.
The area has been identified as a vital wildlife corridor under the Federal Government's Central Forest Spine (CFS) Masterplan for a contiguous network of forests in the backbone of the peninsula.
Malaysian Nature Society president Prof Dr Maketab Mohamed was glad that the area would not be converted into monocrop plantations such as rubber, oil palm or acacia.
He said rehabilitation programmes must begin immediately to restore the area, which had been mostly degraded by logging activities.
World Wide Fund for Nature-Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma praised the gazetting as well as impending construction of a wildlife viaduct as “critical first steps” to secure connectivity in the BTFC.
“This is an example to be followed in other ecological linkages.”
