Clearing and burning of forests, either for timber production or for the purposes of agriculture, has been an endemic problem in many parts of Asia and has resulted in the loss of significant portions of ecologically important habitat. In Malaysia there are efforts ongoing to rehabilitate a number of forest areas which have suffered through such clearing. This has involved the removal of illegal agricultural activities and the replanting of trees to restore the forest. One such area is the North Selangor Peat Swamp Forest where the Selangor Forestry Department has initiated a large scale, long term project to replant this large protected forest area which will make an important contribution to the long term storage of carbon dioxide and climate control.
The North Selangor Peat Swamp Forest is a 75,000 hectare forest located north of Kuala Lumpur close to Batang Berjuntai comprising two forest reserves (the Sungei Karang and Raja Musa Forest Reserves). It is an ecologically important ecosystem for the regulation of climate with the trees absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing this in a thick layer of un-decomposed plant material or peat. The peat in this forest is up to 10m thick, has accumulated over the last 10,000 years and is one of the most important global stores of carbon therefore regulating the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This protected forest area was unfortunately destroyed about 10 to 15 years ago by illegal burning and clearing for agricultural purposes but recently the Selangor Forestry Department has cleared this area of the agricultural development and has started a rehabilitation programme with the replanting of trees to restore the forest. This will make an important contribution to the the maintenance of the peatland and the absorption of carbon dioxide from other activities in Malaysia.
On 13th December, 2008 over 100 volunters from a number of organisations including environmental group (EcoWarriors Malaysia), NGO’s (PATT - Plant-A-Tree-Today and Yayasan Anak Warisan Alam.), representatives from the Global Environment Centre and officers from the Selangor Forestry Department kicked off a tree planting day at the North Selangor Swamp Forest area. Guided by the forestry officers around 3,000 Macaranga saplings were planted over an area of around 2 hectares.The tree planting is planned to continue over many hundreds of acres to re-establish the large areas of damaged forestry areas effected by the clearing and burning.
