Tuesday March 31, 2009
By HILARY CHIEW
IT WAS supposed to be the buffer zone of Endau Rompin National Park in Johor. But over the past year, a large swathe of the lowland forest was felled, leaving a barren landscape stretching as far as the eye can see.
Although generally known as Sungai Mas, the secondary forest lies within the Labis Timur Forest Reserve and the Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve.
It is learnt that the area has been earmarked for a latex timber clone (LTC) plantation – a rubber tree species that will produce latex after the eighth year and later generate further revenue as timber. Two state corporations and a private company have purportedly been licensed to conduct the operation for a 15-year cycle.
The once-forested Sungai Mas area is now barren. The terraced slopes are being prepared for a rubber tree farm. – Pics by IBRAHIM MOHTAR and ABDUL RAHMAN EMBONG/The Star However, the Sg Mas forest is more than a buffer. It is an integral part of the Endau Rompin – Endau Kluang Forest which policy makers at the Federal level is hoping to connect with the other vital forest complex – the Endau-Kota Tinggi Forest in the south-eastern region.
The plan is in support of the establishment of the Central Forest Spine (CFS) recommended by the National Physical Plan (NPP) launched in 2005 which recognises the vital ecological role played by the remaining forests spanning the length of the peninsula. (The NPP is supposed to complement the five-year Malaysia Plan by providing the spatial dimension to the economic plan.) It called for a national effort to re-establish the connectivity of fragmented forests for the protection of water catchments, landslides and floods mitigation and biodiversity conservation.
CFS is essentially the backbone of the environmentally-sensitive area network identified by NPP1 and would form a vital component of the NPP2 that is expected to be completed by year end.
Four forest complexes with six major linkages have been outlined under the CFS and are to be further strengthened by primary and secondary linkages within the individual complexes.
The four forest complexes are: the Banjaran Titiwangsa-Banjaran Bintang-Banjaran Nakawan, Taman Negara-Banjaran Timur, South-east Pahang-Chini and Bera Wetlands, as well as Endau Rompin National Park-Kluang Wildlife Reserve.
Although it is the third largest of the complexes, the Endau Rompin National Park-Kluang Wildlife Reserve boasts of a high wildlife concentration including elephants, tigers, rhinoceros, tapir, leopard and bearded pigs. It is also the most vulnerable, with high fragmentation resulting in bottlenecks and isolated pockets of forest which do not bode well for mammals that need large areas to survive.
Therefore, conservationists are crying foul over the destruction at Sungai Mas which they described as “a disturbing trend of deforestation”, referring to the wholesale clearing of permanent forest reserve (PFR) for plantation sanctioned by none other than the Forestry Department.
“It is disturbing to note that the Forestry Department can allow large scale conversion of forests to take place within the so-called PFR. Rubber plantations are not forests by any stretch of the imagination, and come nowhere close to natural forests in terms of their biodiversity value, or even in their provision of ecosystem services,” lamented Dylan Ong in a letter published by The Star on March 18.
“To my knowledge, in previous years, the standard practice was for portions of forest reserves to be revoked first to state land, and then alienated before being converted for other economic use. This new trend violates the sanctity of forest reserves, which we used to assume have some form of legal protection, and are to be managed sustainably (as forests) for the benefit of future generations,” the forestry researcher further wrote.
Passing the buck
Repeated attempts to obtain information on the project from the state forestry department were unsuccessful. Its director Zulkifli Mokhtar declines to provide any information and through his personal assistant informs this reporter to direct enquiries to the state economic planning unit as “only EPU can answer”.
A spokesman in Johor EPU, however, says: “All this information are with the state forestry department. Such licences are issued by the department. It should not refer such enquiries to us.”
In Johor Bahru, State International Trade and Industry, Energy, Water, Communications and Environment Committee chairman Tan Kok Hong tells The Star Johor reporter Farik Zolkepli that “it’s a matter to be referred to the Mentri Besar”.
Sources say about 1,500ha of forest will be removed to make way for the promotion of LTC plantation, as part of the Federal Government’s drive to set up timber plantations. Yet others say as much as 4,800ha could be affected.
A check with Forest Plantation Development Sdn Bhd, the special purpose vehicle of the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry set up to manage the disbursement of the RM1bil allocation for plantation forest schemes revealed that the purported LTC plantation within the Labis Timur Forest Reserve and Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve does not come under the federal scheme.
“We have only approved one application for LTC plantation and that is Hamid Sawmill Sdn Bhd in Paloh, Johor,” said the official who declined to be named.
The scheme launched in 2006 aims to create 375,000ha of plantation forest by 2020 with a target of 25,000ha per year. Up to early 2008, the government has awarded RM267.6mil to 16 companies for the development of 58,935ha of forest plantations of mainly acacia and LTC.
Another forestry researcher Lim Teck Wyn says the Sungai Mas area forms a crucial landscape-level linkage between the forests of Pahang and Johor.
“The LTC project would cut off Endau Rompin from the forests to the south-east. This would sever populations of large mammals leading to ecological isolation and disruption to many other species,” he warns.
“Whenever there is an overlap between forest reserve and wildlife reserve, the Forestry Department always wins,” he explaines, alluding to the clout the department wields in landuse change and the scant attention paid to wildlife management in the country.
Weak status
Perhilitan director-general Datuk Abd Rasid Samsudin confirmed that the department has not received any application either from the State Government, Forestry Department or plantation companies for a rubber plantation project within the Endau-Kluang Wldlife reserve which overlaps in some parts with the Labis Timur Forest Reserve.
In 1933, the state Wild Animals and Birds Protection Enactment 1923 gazetted three blocks of forest stretching from Segamat in the central-northern region towards the central-eastern region of Kota Tinggi. They are the Segamat Wildlife Reserve, the Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve and the Endau-Kota Tinggi Wildlife Reserve.
Perhilitan reckons the original size of the Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve to be 101,174ha but over the years huge chunkshave been carved out including the 48,905ha Endau Rompin National Park in 1989. In its latest boundaries survey, Perhilitan has not been able to determine the boundaries of the Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve due to insufficient funding under the Ninth Malaysia Plan.
The current extent of the Labis Timur Forest Reserve is also not known. The Johor Forestry Department has declined enquiry about its original size and how much were degazetted over the years.
Based on a World Wide Fund for Nature Malaysia analysis of available gazette notifications and government publications, the Labis Timur Forest Reserve is thought to be at least 132,673ha in 1956, the largest PFR in Johor. Between 1984 and 2008, it experienced a net loss of 23,188ha.
Lim further points out that there are a number of weak links between Endau-Rompin National Park and the forest complex to the east (Labis Timur Forest Reserve and Endau-Kluang Wildlife Reserve) and south-east (Mersing Forest Reserve, Lenggor Tengah Forest Reserve and Lenggor Timur Forest Reserve).
“A number of interventions are required to establish the linkages as proposed by the CFS. Of particular concern is the 10km stretch of stateland forest between Labis Timur Forest Reserve and Mersing Forest Reserve, a bottleneck that needs to be widened and removed the threats from encroaching vegetable farming and sand-mining,” he claims.
He adds that the connection between Mersing Forest Reserve and Lenggor Tengah Forest Reserve which overlaps with the Endau-Kota Tinggi Wildlife Reserve is already fragmented by the 3,000ha Mados oil palm plantation.
Rasid concurs that the link between the Endau-Kluang and Endau-Kota Tinggi Wildlife Reserves needs to be secured. “Perhilitan has long recognised the importance of maintaining this connectivity and therefore has, with the assistance of the Town and Country Planning Department, identified this forest reserve (Mersing Forest Reserve) as an important wildlife corridor under the CFS.
“As such, the department will continue to advise the State Government and concern agencies to keep the remaining forested areas as a wildlife corridor,” he adds.
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Wildlife under threat
This article was taken from: The Star Online: Lifestyle: Focus 31 March 2009
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