0
0
0
Photos @jameswhitlowdelano
The Malaysian rainforest is believed to be 130 million years old. It is the most diverse ecosystem on the planet and home to the Malayan tiger, Asian elephants, Malaysian gaur (the world’s largest wild cattle), tapir, gibbons, monkeys – a total of over 200 species of terrestrial animals, over 300 species of birds, over 1000 species of butterfly and over 14,500 species of flowering plants and trees.
It is also deeply fragile. Cut down the forest, expose the tiny layer of soil to tropical rains, it washes into rivers, turning them orange and suffocating fish. Unlike in middle latitudes, the biomass is almost entirely above ground. Cut the forest and it can take centuries, maybe a millennia, to grow back, if it can at all.
Photo# 1: Dipterocarp flowering season deep in the Belum Rainforest along the Perak River, the homeland of the indigenous Jahai people. Royal Belum State Park, Perak, Malaysia.
Photo# 2: The Sungai Betis (Betis River) runs orange with soil washed down from the intense logging conducted in Temiar territory where recent fatal tiger attacks have occurred. Pulau Setelu, Kelantan, Malaysia.
Photo# 3: Malaysia's largest expense of lowland rainforest, the most diverse ecosystem on the planet. The 434,300 hectare/ 1.1 million acre rainforest of Taman Negara National Park is also one of the oldest forests on earth. Near Kuala Koh, Kelantan, Malaysia
# 4: Clear-cut, denuded hills that have been terraced in preparation for a new, monoculture oil palm plantation where the most diverse ecosystem on the planet, the Malaysian rainforest, once stood here - until very recently part of the shrinking habitat for the critically endangered Malayan tiger. Near Gua Musang, Kelantan, Malaysia
# 5: The pristine rainforest, part of the Central Forest Spine on the Perak side of the Titiwangsa/Banjaran Besar Range. Logging is rampant just over the crest of those peaks on the Kelantan side. Malaysia
Photo# 6: Forest, tiger and other megafauna habitat, absolutely decimated by loggers and bulldozers, under the guise of selective logging, on the road to Pos Pasik. Kelantan, Malaysia.
#Malaysia #logging #environmentaldestruction #rainforest
