More Forest Reserve Land in the Klang Valley Expected to be Gone

Another headline news on the degazettement of forest reserve land that will be making way for urban development in Puchong:

The Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve is one of the last remaining significant forest cover in the urban Klang Valley area. Many years ago, I already had a suspicion that greedy developers (and their government counterparts) wont leave such strategic and precious forest land alone for long as developing it would yield tonnes of profits for far too many interested parties that it will look stupid on them to not do anything with it. This piece of news confirms the degazettement of this significant forest reserve within the city (a total of 68.4 ha to be precise).

This satelitte image shows the location of the Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve in Puchong. It is one of the last remaining significant forest cover within the Klang Valley.

The parts that have been earmarked for future development is located around the northwestern corner of the forest reserve (near the Saraka Appartments). This trend likely wont stop here because as the city grows, so will demand for more housing. This will put pressure on state authorities to degazette more forest land for urban development. Opportunistic developers will obviously be lobbying behind the scenes to tempt stakeholders into opening up more forest land in the city.

The same trend can already be seen in the Mont Kiara area. As Mont Kiara proper is already fully saturated with development, the only way for any development to expand is on the forested lands of Bukit Kiara Hill itself (towards Segambut Dalam area).

Satellite image showing the forested area of Bukit Kiara located next to Mont Kiara proper. Some landed property (Serene Kiara) have already been developed in the middle of the hill as seen on the map.

The Kampung Segambut Dalam area as seen from my childhood home in Mont Kiara Pines. Still very green and forested back then.

Mont Kiara was surrounded by greenery back then. Certainly did not feel like the concrete jungle it is today. View as seen from my childhood home in Mont Kiara Pines.

When I was growing up in the Mont Kiara area, I recall the area towards the Bukit Kiara Hills completely covered in lush greenery. There were certainly very few high rises on this side of town and only the squatter Kampung Segambut Dalam lies there. Fast forward to today (2026), even Kampung Segambut Dalam is dissappearing and being replaced by forest of high rises. When there's no more kampung land to develop, the developers will certainly encroach into the forested Bukit Kiara Hill to expand their development plan of Mont Kiara. It's not a matter of if but when. This is sadly the trend in urban areas whereby forest cover is sacrificed for urban development as the population continues to grow and the demand for housing follows accordingly. There will come a day where the Bukit Kiara forest cover will be completely lost and inevitably be replaced by concrete jungle.

Malaysia Rapidly Losing Its Precious Coral Cover

 Firstly, the news:

 

 These headlines in a way confirms the underwater trend that has been happening in recent times.

 

I have been monitoring these trends out of fascination for sometime now since my underwater dive back then in 2014 in Pulau Redang, Terengganu. I recalled the coral forest back then was simply mesmerizing and certainly captivated my imagination till today. Though I've not been underwater in Terengganu waters in recent times, I do notice the consequence of what's happening underwater through soaring seafood prices in the market. Over the past decade the prices of local fish and seafood in general has soared. This is not solely due to inflation but also the result of diminishing supply of fish and ever increasing demand of seafood consumers.

 

Snorkeling around the Redang coral garden left me with a truly mesmerizing experience seeing brilliant colors of coral in Terengganu waters.

 

I even rarely find certain types of fish in the market these days like the ikan gelama and ikan lemoh which I love eating. And this phenomenon is not just constrained to the big city (KL). Believe it or not, but I can't even get locally sourced fish while I was in Kemaman, Terengganu (my home state) which is surprising given that Terengganu a coastal state whose traditional economy relies on the fishing industry, struggles to feed it's populace with locally harvested seafood (by local I mean caught by Terengganu fishing boats). All the stalls in the Kemaman market (Pasar Borong Dusun Nyior) except one, sells fish mainly sourced from Kuantan instead of Kemaman. That came as a surprise because as I've been buying seafood sourced from Kemaman all this while even dating back to the times of my late maternal grandfather. 

 

My late grandfather was spoiled by choice when buying seafood at the Kuala Kemaman fish market.
 

 The plentiful of seafood variety in the Kuala Kemaman fish market on any given day back then (this picture was taken back in 2010)

 

This phenomenon has several factors at play. Firstly, there's fewer manpower working in the fishing industry these days. As more and more older generation fisherman retire due to age catching up, there are not many younger generation fisherman replacing them. To start off with, the younger generation are not attracted to become fisherman as it is seen as not being rewarding despite the risk faced and hard work involved. Secondly, the fishing business as a whole is becoming less profitable as fish stock continue to shrink. Traditional fishing boats (like the ones that ply the Terengganu waters) need a certain amount of catch to cover the fuel and manpower expense of the vessel for every voyage out to sea. If they return with very little or no catch despite scouring the sea, then they lose money. With less fish stock in sea, the fishing business becomes more challenging. The success of a fishing voyage heavily relies on highly skilled tekong (boat captain) to pin point likely locations of catching schools of fish. To make matters worse, experienced tekongs are hard to come by these days as the older ones retire. This has forced industry players to hire experienced expat tekongs from Thailand which comes at a cost.

 

 Comparison of healthy coral reefs (multitude of brilliant colors) vs bleached coral reefs (all whitish)

 

Back to the related topic of depleting coral cover. This is not a local phenomenon as we also hear of similar news like this all over the world. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has also lost almost half of its coral cover over the years. All this is attributed to the effects of climate change or rather global warming. As global temperatures rise, so does the seawater temperature. And when seawater temperature rises above a certain threshold for a prolonged period, the algae (zooxanthellae) that lives in the coral dies which eventually causes the coral to bleach (loses its colorful lustre) and die. When corals die, so does the ecosystems that surround it. This explains why there's less fish stock in the sea these days which leads to soaring seafood prices in the market as I have observed. This is certainly not an easy trend to reverse as it involves a coordinated global effort to mitigate climate change and global warming. Until humankind gets its act together, we'll probably have to get used to seeing more of this kind of news in the near future.