The oriental blue clearwing, a moth that looks and acts like a bee, was last seen in the 19th century and believed to have long gone extinct. It turns out, though, that the blue-and-white species of clearwing moth, known scientifically as Heterosphecia tawonoides, is alive and well in Malaysia. The…
June 30, 2018. That’s the new deadline until which the current moratorium on all bauxite mining in Pahang will remain in place. The federal government has decided to extend the ban, which first came into effect in January 2016 and was due to expire on December 31 this year. The…
Clean Malaysia was launched in August 2015 with a simple mission: to provide a window for locals and foreigners alike into the wondrous world of Malaysia’s natural environments by highlighting what ails these environments and what can be done to heal them. Clean Malaysia has been a nonprofit passion project…
More than 35,000. That’s how many Sunda pangolins are known to have been lost to poaching and wildlife trafficking within a few short years in neighboring Indonesia. Shocking? You bet. According to a new study by the wildlife-monitoring watchdog TRAFFIC, as many as 35,632 pangolins were seized in 111 enforcement…
Pretty much wherever you look around the planet, wildernesses are shrinking. Well, not everywhere, to be sure, but in places like Borneo forests have shrunk drastically over the past decades. And that is, needless to say, a problem not only for Malaysia but for the entire planet as well. “These…
If you think Penang, a small and overdeveloped island, has lost all of its biodiversity, think again. Malaysia’s most famous island continues to have a few surprises up its sleeve. A 117-strong international team of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences and The Habitat Penang Hill recently conducted a…
We love our smartphones and for good reason. They are handy little devices that can make life a whole lot easier. There is a bit of a problem, though: our devotion to our devices is harming the environment. There are billions of smartphones in use around the planet with millions…
We like lamps. We need them to light up the dark for us. We also like plants. We need them to bring touches of greenery into our homes. Now imagine combining lamps with indoor plants. Would it not be cool? A team of researchers have done just that: create plants…
In June Puntung, one of Malaysia’s last two female Sumatran rhinos, succumbed to an especially acute form of skin cancer. Conservationists and animal lovers alike lamented her passing. They took comfort in the fact that the other female rhino, Iman, remained relatively healthy and strong. This continued to kindle hope…
Quite a few people like to shoot unsuspecting animals dead with powerful rifles from a safe distance and then pose with the remains of these poor creatures in order to flaunt their supposed virility. Don’t ask us why. We have no idea why these people consider such acts of cowardice…
Pollution kills and debilitates. And of all forms of pollution, air pollution is perhaps the most insidious, for breathe air we must throughout our lives and if the air is polluted we have no choice but to breathe in all that invisible pollution along with the oxygen that we need…
Malaysia remains a global hub for wildlife traffickers. We’ve long known that, but here comes some further confirmation of it: wildlife authorities in the African nation of Zimbabwe intercepted 200kg of ivory that was on its way to Malaysia. The haul of illicit elephant tusks, which had been stashed in…
A half century ago there were still around 3,000 tigers in the wild around Malaysia. Today there may well be as few as 250 left, less than a tenth of that figure. And if we don’t do all we can to save the last few hundred tigers, there won’t be…
Come December 17, you can do something for the wild in Sarawak . . . in a hurry. The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Run for the Wild event this year will kick off on Sunday at the Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak Campus, in Kuching. First launched in 2015, Run for…
Your boat or ship springs a leak and oil spills into the sea. What can you do? It’s not your fault. Right? Whether it’s your fault or not, you may well be responsible for even accidental oil spills if Natural Resources and Environment Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar has his…
Bornean pygmy elephants are facing existential threats in Sabah and so the death of any more wild elephants in the state is bad news. Yet just over the past few months several wild elephants have been shot dead by poachers or irate plantation workers. Now another wild elephant is dead….
