KUALA ROMPIN: 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.
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.
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.
The main cause of this decline is loss of habitats and poaching, according to the organisation.
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.
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”.
Dept: Poor timber quality the reason for forest clearing
The Star 25 Sep 14;
Here today, gone tomorrow: Trucks carrying logs from the Lesong permanent forest reserve.
Here today, gone tomorrow: Trucks carrying logs from the Lesong permanent forest reserve.
KUALA ROMPIN: 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.
Some 3,000ha of forest, he said, had been earmarked for forest plantation development and licensed for logging as at the end of July this year.
This area comes under a much larger 16,896ha area designated by Pahang as industrial timber plantation since 2012 and is termed a “degraded” forest.
A second 16,958ha area has been marked as production forest, where it would be managed according to “sustainable forest management principles”.
The remaining 32% of Lesong would be protected. Lesong’s total area is 52,464ha.
“The whole 16,896ha of Lesong that have been designated for forest plantation can all be classified as degraded or poor forest,” Mohd Paiz said.
He added that once these approved plantation sites were logged, they would be replanted with commercial timber trees and rubber trees, among others.
They would also meet the demand of domestic timber processing industries, he said.
He said the area chosen to be developed as a forest plantation was considered easily accessible and its terrain was suitable for conversion to oil palm and other agricultural activities.
When asked about concerns that wildlife habitats would be at risk due to the logging, Mohd Paiz said the placement of the sites did not form a single whole block and that natural forests in the area would still be retained.
Jungle the size of Cyberjaya logged
patrick lee The Star 25 Sep 14;
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 reserve forest 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”.
Environmentalists, however, are up in arms, saying that although the state has the legal right to do so, the move could have devastating effects on Malaysian wildlife.
In two separate visits to Lesong in mid-July, The Star observed a flurry of logging in more than a dozen sites in the forest.
Entire hills had been cleared from top to bottom, with tracks crisscrossing them to make it easier for vehicles to reach the summits.
The first such site in the eastern part of the reserve was clearly seen just one or two kilometres from an oil palm plantation, with felled trees and smashed foliage mere metres from a state-erected sign forbidding logging. Trucks were seen at some of these sites carrying logs from centres out of the jungle.
Signs stating that the logging had been permitted were also displayed at many of these sites.
Several logging camps, complete with heavy machinery and foreign workers, were connected to each other by roads wide enough for the trucks.
Though no wildlife was spotted in the area, there were elephant tracks and dung on some of these roads.
Loggers there observed The Star with suspicion and a few warned us not to take photos, but they did not interfere.
Many of the large logs gathered within the jungle – some collected in the hundreds – were then carried out in the trucks to a site east of the forest reserve, less than 10km away.
In one such area, well over a few hundred logs were left waiting to be transported.
A few rivers were also rendered stagnant, their flow blocked by debris – presumably dumped there by loggers.
As we travelled through the jungle, we observed portions of the forest that appeared to have been logged years before, overgrown with bush no more than a few metres high.
An orang asli who only wanted to be known as Juba said loggers had been frequenting the forest for many years but the activity had heightened since the beginning of the year.
He added that the loggers had been working nearly every day since then.
According to the National Tiger Action Plan, Lesong comes under the Endau-Rompin Complex, one of the three tiger priority areas in the country.
It is not known how much the concessionaries could gain from the logs removed from the forest.
The Pahang State Forestry Department said the expected harvestable volume was about 50 to 116 cubic metres per hectare.
Forest researcher Lim Teck Wyn told The Star that logged timber was generally worth RM1,000 per cubic metre.
Even at a conservative estimate, the amount of logged timber from the 3,000ha could be worth RM150mil.
Council: Developed markets won’t accept uncertified timber
The Star 26 Sep 14;
KUALA LUMPUR: Once Lesong’s forests are turned into forest plantation areas, timber logged there cannot be exported to developed markets.
Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) chief executive Yong Teng Koon revealed that timber from these places could, however, be sold to local mills and countries that allow the importation of uncertified timber.
“Timber that originates from forest areas converted into forest plantation is regarded as coming from controversial sources and, therefore, cannot be certified,” Yong told The Star.
He said timber approved under the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS) could be exported to developed markets such as Britain and the United States.
Non-certified timber, he said, could only be sent to countries that were not bound by these policies, such as Thailand.
Yong added that as far as the Lesong forest reserve was concerned, the portion covering 16,896ha that had been earmarked for the establishment of forest plantation, was outside the scope of certification of natural forest under the MTCS, created to develop and operate a voluntary national timber certification scheme and said to be the first of its kind in Asia.
Its role is to make sure that our forests are logged sustainably and meet the market demand for certified timber.
Yong added that a permanent reserve forest, such as Lesong, should not be degazetted into a forest plantation establishment, preferring for its land status to stay as forest cover.
He said he was worried that such an area might be converted to other land use.
An MTCC official said timber latex clones (or rubberwood) were recommended as one of eight timber species under the Malaysian Timber Industry Board’s Forest Plantation Development Programme.
“According to this programme, the Federal Government plans to open some 375,000ha of fast-growing timber tree plantations in Malaysia over a 15-year period,” the official said.
The other seven species are acacia, jati, sentang, khaya, kelempayan (or laran), batai and binuang.