Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Rubber trees and oil palms have replaced most of the rainforest. A fl ight
over the Malaysian lowlands today reveals an unnervingly uniform land-
scape. Gone are the infi nite shades of green of the lowland forest, where the
crown dipterocarps towered far above their neighbors. Instead the landscape
resembles an immense pair of green corduroy trousers, stretching out to the
horizon. The corduroy is made up of row upon row of oil palms.
Oil palms grow rapidly, producing their fi rst crop of fruit in three years.
In contrast even a planted teak forest, which despite its uniformity does
retain some of the original forest's diversity in its understory, will take 70
years to mature. It is obvious which type of crop is more likely to be funded
by banks and corporations impatient for a return on their investment. The
replacement of the Malaysian forests by oil palms and rubber trees has greatly
increased the pressure put on the remaining fragments of forest by the hunt-
ing activities of the aboriginal population.
There are some rays of hope. Discoveries over the past decade of a cor-
nucopia of new animals and plants in peninsular Southeast Asia and Borneo
sparked news stories around the world. In February 2007, the three countries
that have divided up Borneo agreed to protect about a third of it. This “Heart
of Borneo” agreement has been brokered by the World Wildlife Fund and the
government of Brunei, and there is growing enthusiasm for the agreement
on Borneo itself. It is the largest ecological treaty in human history, involving
at least 220,000 square kilometers. By comparison, Yellowstone Park in the
western USA protects only 8,980 square kilometers.
Unlike Borneo, most of peninsular Malaysia's ecological diversity has
already been destroyed, and there is only one oi cial national park. This
park, eponymously called Taman Negara or “national park,” along with
some other protected areas, account for about 4% of the originally forested
area.
The aboriginal peoples of the region, known as the Orang Asli or “fi rst
people,” carry the genetic legacy of the scattered bands of the Great Migra-
tion who trickled through peninsular Malaysia and fanned out across the
open plains of Sundaland. Like the earliest settlers of southern India, these
tribes have intermingled with later arrivals. They were probably driven from
their fi rst settlements on the coasts into the interior forests by the spread
