Let state assembly decide on degazetting forests, Selangor told

 

Four hundred hectares of the Bukit Cherakah forest reserve in Selangor had been found to have been ‘excised’ last May.

PETALING JAYA: An environmental and forestry researcher has called on the Selangor government to amend its forestry laws so that the degazetting of forest reserves requires the approval of the state assembly.

Teckwyn Lim, an honorary associate professor at the University of Nottingham, said this would have prevented a development project purportedly involving a part of the Bukit Cherakah forest reserve.

“If the state assembly had been given a say, they would have rejected the Bukit Cherakah development,” he said at a talk held by the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS).

He said this amendment to forestry laws could also be done by Putrajaya in Parliament.

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Teckwyn Lim.

Lim pointed out that Selangor changed its forest reserve laws in 2011 so that degazetting any forest area would require a public inquiry to be held.

“However, 400ha of the Bukit Cherakah forest reserve were ‘excised’ on May 5. How could that be when there has been no public inquiry?

“Is this even legal? The law clearly states you must have the inquiry, and yet they didn’t do that,” he said.

Lim also said that there were previous contradictions from the authorities surrounding the status of the land, with environment committee chairman Hee Loy Sian saying the Bukit Cherakah land was degazetted in 2006.

“However, not only was the gazette notification only issued on May 5 this year, the date it states that the excision came into force was backdated 22 years ago, in 2000,” he said.

Lim, a representative of the Shah Alam Community Forest Association, said that Bukit Cherakah’s ecology needed to be protected as it was home to a diverse range of flora and fauna like tapirs, white-handed gibbons, hornbills and over 450 species of plants.

He proposed that the federal government increase its ecological fiscal transfer budget allocation, saying the current sum of RM70 million was insufficient.

He said the RM70 million was only allocated to incentivise the creation of new protected areas at the state level.

“The federal government should also impose conditions that states must abide by, like stating which areas they will use for the creation of new protected areas.”

In October, Lim had urged Selangor to stop all development in the Bukit Cherakah forest reserve area until its status was determined.

He said Hee had repeatedly claimed the forest had been degazetted through Gazette Notification 1443 and that its permanent forest reserve status had been withdrawn by the state government to develop Bandar Puncak Alam, Alam Budiman and UiTM Puncak Alam, among others.

However, a check with the authorities found that Gazette Notification 1443 published in 2006 did not mention the forest at all, he said. - FMT