Malaysia: Open burning main cause of fires

New Straits Times 25 Mar 14;

KEPALA BATAS: Land-clearing by open burning has been identified as the main source of bush fires in the country, said Fire and Rescue Department director-general Datuk Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim.

He said the main culprits for more than 90 per cent of bush fires reported to date were those who wanted a quicker and cheaper way of clearing bushes for small-scale agricultural activities.

"We receive between 200 and 300 calls on bush fires nationwide daily.

"The majority of them involved bush fires and most of the cases were caused by those wanting to clear bush land for small-scale farming," he said after giving away commendation letters to 142 firemen in the northern states.

He said the department received 17,000 telephone calls on bush and peat fires between Jan 15 and March 15 this year.

"In comparison, we received about the same number of calls on bush and peat fires for the first six months of last year.

"That is how serious the problem is now," he said, adding that everyone should be concerned and take steps to stop open burning in light of the current hot and dry spell.

He said unless the matter was checked, haze could worsen in many parts of the country.

'Cloud seeding to continue in west coast'
MASTURA YUSOFF AND QISTINA HAMIZAN New Straits Times 25 Mar 14;

MET DEPT: Necessary due to critical water levels

KUALA LUMPUR: CLOUD seeding will continue to replenish water levels at dams nationwide.

Malaysian Meteorological Department (MMD) director-general Datuk Che Gayah Ismail said cloud seeding remained an option despite the rainfall. She said cloud seeding was necessary as the water level in dams across peninsular Malaysia were critical.

"We will monitor clouds at the dam areas that are suitable for cloud seeding every day. As soon as there are suitable clouds for cloud seeding, we will send the aircraft for the job."

Deputy Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Abu Bakar Mohamad Diah said cloud seedings would be carried out at the Muda and Pedu dams in Kedah; Klang Gates Dam in Kuala Lumpur; and Jus Dam in Jasin, Malacca.

He said Cessna aircraft will be used for the operations, which will start in the north, namely in Kedah and to the South in Johor.

Meanwhile, the air quality nationwide yesterday was good except for 11 areas, which recorded moderate levels of Air Pollutant Index (API) as of 5pm.

The areas were Shah Alam ,with an API reading of 58, Kuala Selangor (64), Port Klang (52), Sibu (52), Kota Kinabalu (51), USM (62), Perai (53), Kangar (54), S K Jalan Pegoh (60) Jalan Tasek (54) and Balok Baru (58). The other 41 areas recorded good API readings.

A reading of between 0 and 50 is categorised as good, 51 and 100 as moderate, 101 and 200 as unhealthy, 201 and 300 as very unhealthy and 300 and above as hazardous.

Department of Environment director-general Datuk Halimah Hassan said they would continue monitoring the air quality through 52 stations nationwide to identify changes in the API.

"The current heavy rain during inter-monsoon season helps to improve weather condition," she told the New Straits Times.

Read more!

Indonesia: Shrinking Forests Hamper Orangutan Release

Tunggadewa Mattangkilang Jakarta Globe 24 Mar 14;

Balikpapan. Ten orangutans have been released back into the wild in East Kalimantan after recovery in the Samboja Lestari rehabilitation center.

The six female and four male orangutans were set free in the Kehjesewen conservation forest in the East Kutai district of East Kalimantan on Thursday by the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (Yayasan BOS).

“In 2014 we began our program by releasing 10 orangutans back into the wild. We are optimistic that we will be able to release more orangutans into their natural habitat — but this has to be supported by the existence of quality, safe forests,” said Samboja Lestari program manager Agus Irwanto.

Agus said the BOS was committed to achieving the release target set up in the Indonesian Orangutan Conservation Action Plan for 2007-2017, announced by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono during the climate change conference in Bali in 2007. The plan calls for all orangutans in rehabilitation centers to be released back into their natural habitats by 2015.

Agus said that so far the BOS had released 31 orangutans back into natural forests. But more orangutans could be released if deforestation was halted, he said.

“We really hope that all stakeholders will support [orangutan] release by ensuring the provision of decent and safe forests in the future,” he said.

Agus said orangutans were facing extinction in the wild because of fast-paced deforestation driven largely by clearing for oil palm and pulp and paper plantations, most of which are owned by large conglomerates rather than local farmers.

Wildlife experts warn that shrinking habitats have increased contact between the forest-dwelling orangutans and villagers and is the primary cause of an upswing in human-on-animal violence in Kalimantan and Sumatra.

Authorities have recorded a disturbing number of cases of people killing the endangered creatures, both deliberately and incidentally by felling and burning the forests they live in.

Examples include a female orangutan that died in 2010 in Pontianak’s Sungai Pinyuh subdistrict after being captured by villagers with her baby, and another orangutan killed in 2012 near Pontianak’s Parit Wak Dongkak subdistrict after sustaining serious burns in a fire lit for land clearance. The animal died while being treated for its injuries.

In October last year, an orangutan was found dead in Pontianak’s Peniraman village, with its skull reportedly bashed in.

One of the most biodiverse countries, Indonesia has seen huge swaths of forest cut down for timber and agribusiness. The country was home to nearly half of the world’s oil palm plantations in 2006 after years of concession land grabs, illegal logging and lax law enforcement, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Palm oil is the world’s most ubiquitous vegetable oil and a main driver of deforestation in Indonesia.

Read more!

Indonesia: 416 fires detected across Sumatra

The Jakarta Post 24 Mar 14;

At least 416 fires in peatland and forested areas were recorded on Monday across Sumatra with Riau having the largest number of hotspots, totaling 294, according to surveillance data from the Terra satellite.

Of the total fires in Riau, 56 were detected in Rokan Ilir regency, followed by Bengkalis with 51 fires, Siak with 46, Indragiri Hulu with 36, Pelalawan with 33, Dumai city with 27 and the others in other regencies, the Riau Haze Mitigation Task Force said as reported by Antara news agency.

The task force members, in cooperation with representatives from the Riau Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD), would continue in their efforts to fight the fires, which have caused thick, choking haze not only in local cities but also out in neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia, BPBD head Said Saqlul Amri said.

The authorities also plan to intensify law enforcement measures against perpetrators who are conducting rampant land-clearance activities, primarily with slash-and-burn methods, which have caused the fires.

Since the reoccurrence of severe haze in Riau this year, the Riau Police had received 44 reports of forest and peatland fires in nine regencies and municipalities across the province, Riau Police chief Brig. Gen. Condro Kirono said.

He added that their investigations into five of the 44 reports were still at a preliminary stage, while 16 other cases had progressed to more in-depth investigation. (yln)

Read more!

Indonesian pulp and paper giant says is "victim" of forest haze

Michael Taylor Reuters 24 Mar 14;

(Reuters) - Forest fires and haze have become so bad in northern Sumatra that a Indonesian pulp and paper company held partly responsible by green groups has declared itself as a casualty, saying the environmental catastrophe was costing it millions of dollars.

Criticism of palm oil plantation owners and companies like Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL), Asia's second-largest pulp and paper firm, intensified after Indonesia's Riau province declared a state of emergency in late February.

A study released earlier this month by World Resources Institute (WRI) found that 36 percent of fires in Sumatra from Feb. 20 to March 12, were in pulpwood plantation areas.

The think tank said the concessions with the highest share of fire alerts include many that are affiliated with APRIL and rival Asia Pulp & Paper Group (APP).

"We are the victim of this entire situation," APRIL's president Praveen Singhavi told Reuters, estimating the cost to the company was between $5-6 million.

Singhavi said the illegal burning was largely the fault of small-holders using slash and burn methods, and fires in APRIL's concessions were in areas overlapping or disputed with local communities. An unusually early start to the dry season had exacerbated the fire risk, he added.

The APRIL president advocated a combined effort from corporate, government and local communities to tackle the forest fires and haze.

In its report WRI said: "Under Indonesian law, the companies do bear responsibility for fires on their land, even if they did not start the fires. Fires are symptoms of longstanding poor forest and land management."

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had to apologise to neighbours Singapore and Malaysia in mid-2013, when those countries were blanketed with thick smog from forest fires in Indonesia.

Both palm and pulp and paper companies have been criticised by green groups for not doing enough to stop the annual haze problem or the rampant deforestation and destruction of carbon-rich peatlands in Indonesia.

APRIL, an unlisted company, owns plantations covering around 460,000 hectares, and according to its president it operates a strict 'no-burn' policy.

Earlier this month, the firm suspended forestry operations on an island off Sumatra and transferred 130 staff to fire lines to protect its plantations. It has deployed its own 600-strong fire-fighting team, helicopters and pumping equipment to tackle the fires, and said on its website that it had lost 400 hectares since January to illegal burning.

Rival APP has said it would stop using timber from Indonesia's natural forests and only use trees from plantations.

In January, APRIL also launched new sustainability policies that will halt plantation expansion by the end of this year and only use supplies from its own plantations by 2019. (Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

Read more!

Most Of Indonesia's Major Rivers Heavily Polluted, Says Environment Minister

Elmi Rizal Elias Bernama 24 Mar 14;

JAKARTA, March 24 (Bernama) -- Seventy-five per cent of the major rivers in Indonesia are heavily polluted, Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya said Monday.

He said 60 per cent of the cause of the pollution was domestic waste.

"Of the 57 major rivers monitored for their water quality last year, 75 per cent were found to be heavily polluted," he was quoted as saying by Antara news agency when opening a technical meeting on the monitoring of water quality in Indonesia in Bengkulu City.

The meeting, attended by representatives of environmental organisations, serves as a platform to discuss the causes of pollution and strategies to preserve river water quality in the country.

River pollution was closely linked to the behaviour of the people, Balthasar said, adding that the industrial sector also contributed to the pollution of rivers.

"Rivers are regarded as the most strategic places to discard rubbish when they are actually the sources of the raw water that we utilise," he said.

-- BERNAMA

Read more!

UN: 2013 extreme events due to warming Earth

JOHN HEILPRIN Associated Press Yahoo News 25 Mar 14;

GENEVA (AP) — The head of the U.N. weather agency said Monday that recent extreme weather patterns are "consistent" with human-induced climate change, citing key events that wreaked havoc in Asia, Europe, the U.S. and Pacific region last year.

Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, said his agency's annual assessment of the global climate shows how dramatically people and lands everywhere felt the impacts of extreme weather such as droughts, heat waves, floods and tropical cyclones.

"Many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with what we would expect as a result of human-induced climate change," he said.

The U.N. agency called 2013 the sixth-warmest year on record. Thirteen of the 14 warmest years have occurred in the 21st century.

A rise in sea levels is leading to increasing damage from storm surges and coastal flooding, as demonstrated by Typhoon Haiyan, Jarraud said. The typhoon in November killed at least 6,100 people and caused $13 billion in damage to the Philippines and Vietnam.

Australia, meanwhile, had its hottest year on record and parts of central Asia and central Africa also notched record highs.

Jarraud drew special attention to studies and climate modeling examining Australia's recent heat waves, saying the high temperatures there would have been virtually impossible without the emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil and gas.

He cited other costly weather disasters such as $22 billion damage from central European flooding in June, $10 billion in damage from Typhoon Fitow in China and Japan, and a $10 billion drought in much of China.

Only a few places were cooler than normal. Among them was the central U.S.

Jarraud also cited frigid polar air in parts of Europe and the southeast U.S., and the widest tornado ever observed over rural areas of central Oklahoma, as being among extreme weather events.

There were 41 billion-dollar weather disasters in the world last year, the second highest number behind only 2010, according to insurance firm Aon Benfield, which tracks global disasters.

Jarraud spoke as top climate scientists and representatives from about 100 governments with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Japan to complete their latest report on global warming's impact.

Read more!

Big climate report: Warming is big risk for people

SETH BORENSTEIN Associated Press Yahoo News 25 Mar 14;

If you think of climate change as a hazard for some far-off polar bears years from now, you're mistaken. That's the message from top climate scientists gathering in Japan this week to assess the impact of global warming.

In fact, they will say, the dangers of a warming Earth are immediate and very human.

"The polar bear is us," says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., referring to the first species to be listed as threatened by global warming due to melting sea ice.

She will be among the more than 60 scientists in Japan to finish writing a massive and authoritative report on the impacts of global warming. With representatives from about 100 governments at this week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they'll wrap up a summary that tells world leaders how bad the problem is.

The key message from leaked drafts and interviews with the authors and other scientists: The big risks and overall effects of global warming are far more immediate and local than scientists once thought. It's not just about melting ice, threatened animals and plants. It's about the human problems of hunger, disease, drought, flooding, refugees and war, becoming worse.

The report says scientists have already observed many changes from warming, such as an increase in heat waves in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Severe floods, such as the one that displaced 90,000 people in Mozambique in 2008, are now more common in Africa and Australia. Europe and North America are getting more intense downpours that can be damaging. Melting ice in the Arctic is not only affecting the polar bear, but already changing the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people in northern Canada.

Past panel reports have been ignored because global warming's effects seemed too distant in time and location, says Pennsylvania State University scientist Michael Mann.

This report finds "It's not far-off in the future and it's not exotic creatures — it's us and now," says Mann, who didn't work on this latest report.

The United Nations established the climate change panel in 1988 and its work is done by three groups. One looks at the science behind global warming. The group meeting in Japan beginning Tuesday studies its impacts. And a third looks at ways to slow warming.

Its reports have reiterated what nearly every major scientific organization has said: The burning of coal, oil and gas is producing an increasing amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Those gases change Earth's climate, bringing warmer temperatures and more extreme weather, and the problem is worsening.

The panel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, months after it issued its last report.

Since then, the impact group has been reviewing the latest research and writing 30 chapters on warming's effects and regional impacts. Those chapters haven't been officially released but were posted on a skeptical website.

The key message can be summed up in one word that the overall report uses more than 5,000 times: risk.

"Climate change really is a challenge in managing risks," says the report's chief author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science in California. "It's very clear that we are not prepared for the kind of events we're seeing."

Already the effects of global warming are "widespread and consequential," says one part of the larger report, noting that science has compiled more evidence and done much more research since the last report in 2007.

If climate change continues, the panel's larger report predicts these harms:

— VIOLENCE: For the first time, the panel is emphasizing the nuanced link between conflict and warming temperatures. Participating scientists say warming won't cause wars, but it will add a destabilizing factor that will make existing threats worse.

— FOOD: Global food prices will rise between 3 and 84 percent by 2050 because of warmer temperatures and changes in rain patterns. Hotspots of hunger may emerge in cities.

— WATER: About one-third of the world's population will see groundwater supplies drop by more than 10 percent by 2080, when compared with 1980 levels. For every degree of warming, more of the world will have significantly less water available.

— HEALTH: Major increases in health problems are likely, with more illnesses and injury from heat waves and fires and more food and water-borne diseases. But the report also notes that warming's effects on health is relatively small compared with other problems, like poverty.

— WEALTH: Many of the poor will get poorer. Economic growth and poverty reduction will slow down. If temperatures rise high enough, the world's overall income may start to go down, by as much as 2 percent, but that's difficult to forecast.

According to the report, risks from warming-related extreme weather, now at a moderate level, are likely to get worse with just a bit more warming. While it doesn't say climate change caused the events, the report cites droughts in northern Mexico and the south-central United States, and hurricanes such as 2012's Sandy, as illustrations of how vulnerable people are to weather extremes. It does say the deadly European heat wave in 2003 was made more likely because of global warming.

Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, who was not part of this report team, says the important nuance is how climate change interacts with other human problems: "It's interacting and exacerbating problems we already have today."

University of Colorado science policy professor Roger Pielke Jr., a past critic of the panel's impact reports, said after reading the draft summary, "it's a lot of important work ... They made vast improvements to the quality of their assessments."

Another critic, University of Alabama Huntsville professor John Christy, accepts man-made global warming but thinks its risks are overblown when compared with something like poverty. Climate change is not among the developing world's main problems, he says.

But other scientists say Christy is misguided. Earlier this month, the world's largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, published a new fact sheet on global warming.

It said: "Climate change is already happening. More heat waves, greater sea level rise and other changes with consequences for human health, natural ecosystems and agriculture are already occurring in the United States and worldwide. These problems are very likely to become worse over the next 10 to 20 years and beyond."

Texas Tech's Hayhoe says scientists in the past may have created the impression that the main reason to care about climate change was its impact on the environment.

"We care about it because it's going to affect nearly every aspect of human life on this planet," she says.

___

Online:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

Read more!

Polluted air linked to 7 million deaths in 2012 : WHO

Kate Kelland Reuters Yahoo News 25 Mar 14;

LONDON (Reuters) - Air pollution killed about 7 million people in 2012, making it the world's single biggest environmental health risk, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

The toll, a doubling of previous estimates, means one in eight of all global deaths in 2012 was linked to polluted air and shows how reducing pollution inside and outside of people's homes could save millions of lives in future, the United Nations health agency said.

Air pollution deaths are most commonly from heart disease, strokes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is also linked to deaths from lung cancer and acute respiratory infections.

"The evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe," said Maria Neira, head of the WHO's environmental and social public health department.

"The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes," she said.

Poor and middle-income countries in southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region had the largest air pollution-related burden in 2012, with 3.3 million deaths linked to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million deaths to outdoor air pollution.

Indoor pollution is mostly caused by cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves. The WHO estimates that around 2.9 billion people worldwide live in homes using wood, coal or dung as their primary cooking fuel.

Flavia Bustreo, a WHO family health expert, said women and children - especially those living in poor countries - often bear the brunt of the risks from indoor pollution "since they spend more time at home breathing in smoke and soot from leaky coal and wood cooking stoves."

Outdoors, air is mainly polluted by transport, power generation, industrial and agricultural emissions and residential heating and cooking.

Research suggests outdoor air pollution exposure levels have risen significantly in some parts of the world, particularly in countries with large populations going through rapid industrialization, such as China and India.

The WHO's cancer research agency IARC published a report last year warning that the air we breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and should be officially classified as carcinogenic to humans.

Carlos Dora, a WHO public health expert, called on governments and health agencies to act on the evidence and devise policies to reduce air pollution, which in turn would improve health and reduce humans' impact on climate change

"Excessive air pollution is often a by-product of unsustainable policies in sectors such as transport, energy, waste management and industry," he said.

"In most cases, healthier strategies will also be more economical in the long term due to healthcare cost savings as well as climate gains."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Read more!

Eleven EU nations exceed air pollution ceilings: EEA

Alister Doyle PlanetArk 25 Mar 14;

Eleven European Union nations breached ceilings for air pollution in 2012 despite plans to avert health-damaging smog of the sort that choked Paris this month, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said on Monday.

The number rose from 10 in 2011, with the addition of Malta to the list of states above national limits set for at least one of four pollutants from sources including industry and cars.

"Air pollution is still a very real problem," EEA executive director Hans Bruyninckx said in a statement of the national limits that had been meant to be achieved by 2010, pointing to high pollution across parts of western Europe this month.

"We need to improve this situation by making further emissions cuts," he said. Last week, Paris imposed a partial driving ban and made public transport free to combat high levels of smog.

Despite the violations, the Copenhagen-based EEA said that EU-wide emissions of each of the four pollutants - sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ammonia and non-methane volatile organic compounds - had declined from 2011-12.

Nine EU nations - Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Spain - breached their nitrogen oxide limits in 2012, mainly because of persistently high emissions from cars and trucks, the EEA said.

Denmark and Finland exceeded the ammonia limits while Luxembourg was alone in overshooting the volatile organic compound ceiling. All countries met sulphur dioxide targets.

Violations of the limits can in theory end with fines, although none have been imposed.

(Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Read more!

Global warming not stopped, will go on for centuries: WMO

Robert Evans PlanetArk 25 Mar 14;

There has been no reverse in the trend of global warming and there is still consistent evidence for man-made climate change, the head of the U.N. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Monday.

A slow-down in the average pace of warming at the planet's surface this century has been cited by "climate skeptics" as evidence that climate change is not happening at the potentially catastrophic rate predicted by a U.N. panel of scientists.

But U.N. weather agency chief Michel Jarraud said ocean temperatures, in particular, were rising fast, and extreme weather events, forecast by climate scientists, showed climate change was inevitable for the coming centuries.

"There is no standstill in global warming," Jarraud said as he presented the WMO's annual review of the world's climate which concluded that 2013 tied with 2007 as the sixth hottest year since 1850 when recording of annual figures began.

"The warming of our oceans has accelerated, and at lower depths. More than 90 percent of the excess energy trapped by greenhouse gases is stored in the oceans.

"Levels of these greenhouse gases are at a record, meaning that our atmosphere and oceans will continue to warm for centuries to come. The laws of physics are non-negotiable," Jarraud told a news conference.

The 21-page survey said the global land and sea surface temperature in 2013 was 14.5 degrees Celsius (58.1 Fahrenheit), or 0.50C (0.90F) above the 1961-90 average. It was also 0.03C (0.05F) up on the average for 2001-2010.

The WMO's Annual Statement on the Status of the Climate, pointed to droughts, heatwaves, rising seas, floods and tropical cyclones around the globe last year as evidence of what the future might hold.

FLUCTUATIONS

It was issued on the eve of a conference bringing climate scientists together with officials from over 100 governments in Japan from March 25-29 to approve a report on the effects of future global warming and how these might be mitigated.

A draft of this report, from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says global warming will disrupt food supplies, slow world economic growth and may already be causing irreversible damage to nature.

The chair of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, told Reuters last week that the report made even more compelling the scientific arguments for a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Some 200 countries have agreed to try to limit global warming to less than 2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, largely by cutting emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

Skeptics argue that changes in global weather are the product of natural fluctuations or other natural causes.

But such arguments were rejected by Jarraud.

Natural phenomena like volcanoes or the El Nino/La Nina weather patterns originating in Pacific Ocean temperature changes had always framed the planet's climate, affecting heat levels and disasters like drought and floods, he said.

"But many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with what we would expect as a result of human-induced climate change," declared the WMO chief, pointing to the destruction wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.

Another example was the record hot summer of 2012-13 in Australia which brought huge bush fires and destruction of property. Computer simulations showed the heat wave was 5 times as likely under human influence on climate, Jarraud said.

Among other extreme events of 2013 probably due to climate change were winter freezes in the U.S. south-east and Europe, heavy rains and floods in north-east China and eastern Russia, snow across the Middle East and drought in south-east Africa.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Read more!

Best of our wild blogs: 24 Mar 14

Fed up about marine litter? Here's how you can DO something
from wild shores of singapore

12 Apr (Sat) evening: Free guided walk at the Pasir Ris mangroves
from Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs

Mangrove cleanup at Sungei Api-Api (Pasir Ris Park), 19th April Saturday from The Green Volunteers

Nesting behaviour of the Spotted Dove
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Snapper @ Changi
from Monday Morgue

Read more!

Malaysia: Seagrass meadow in danger

The Star 24 Mar 14;

WE are concerned over the report on “Country Garden, KPRJ plan massive reclamation development for luxury homes”.

The approval of this plan means that Malaysia’s largest intertidal seagrass meadow measuring 1.8km in length covering over 38ha will be permanently buried.

The project has since begun with sand barges dumping sand while the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) has yet to be made available to the public.

Being the largest seagrass ecosystem in the country, it harbours a unique biodiversity and the densest seahorse population in the country comprising two species, and is a rich nursery ground for seafood resources.

The seahorses are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, thus destroying their habitat will add further impact to their plight and conservation status.

On top of being the home of various marine organisms and an important nursery ground for commercially important food fishes and marine invertebrates, the seagrass meadows also serve to prevent soil erosion, and act as a carbon sink and wave buffer zone (dissipating wave energy which can cause damage to coastal infrastructures).

Local fishermen depend heavily on the seagrass meadow to support their livelihood. Removal of this unique area will have an adverse impact on the environment as well as those who depend on it.

We urge for the reconsideration of the massive reclamation project for the sake of the great diversity of marine life, livelihood of the locals and survival of the Meram­bong seagrass meadow, Malaysia’s largest intertidal seagrass treasure.

SAVE OUR SEAHORSES (SOS) MALAYSIA

Petaling Jaya

Read more!