One day, warns Ahmad A Talib, chairman of the environmentalist group Yayasan Salam Malaysia, the pleasant blue and green world we’ve long known as our home planet will have ceased to exist as a haven of natural wonders. Instead, it will be a largely barren and dismal place with runaway…

Among Malaysia’s least-known residents is a species of shy marine mammals. They look remarkably like seals and are almost as elusive as the mythical mermaids that people used to mistake them for. We’re talking of dugongs, of course. Dugongs are among the rarest wild creatures in the country with a mere…

In a move hailed by conservationists as a major milestone, CITES has imposed a total worldwide ban on the sale of pangolins. Does that mean pangolins, including Malaysia’s own Sunda pangolins, are saved? That depends. A ban will only work if it is enforced vigorously in countries like Malaysia. And…

Corruption on a large scale isn’t just a moral and social issue; it can be an existential one, too. By undermining the rule of law, pervasive corruption and a lack of accountability can endanger the very workings of society, including good governance and general prosperity. That, needless to say, has…

Saltwater crocodiles have enjoyed protection as an endangered species in Sarawak. As a result, they have come to thrive in the Bornean state’s waterways, often to the consternation of locals who have occasionally been attacked by the reptilian predators. Wild populations of saltwater crocodiles in Sarawak have rebounded greatly over…

Urban areas almost always come at the expense of natural environments. Where clusters of houses rise and stand ever thicker on the ground in densely populated urban areas, trees and vegetation invariably disappear with nothing but little parks remaining here and there as beleaguered little vestiges of green. A case…

There’s a lot of plastic trash in the world’s oceans – that we have known. Turns out, though, that there is even more of it than we’ve thought. That is according to a Dutch foundation, which is planning a major clean-up operation of flotsam and jetsam as of the year…

A community of indigenous people in Kelantan is up in arms and not unjustifiably so. Members of the Kelantan Network of Orang Asli Villages (JKOAK) blockaded roads to an area of the Gua Musung forest reserve, which they consider their ancestral land. The reason: they want to stop loggers decimating…

The question is: “Do Malaysians really care about Sharks?” The answer, according to WWF-Malaysia, is disheartening: not that much. “Apart from encounters shielded by glass thicker than the Great Wall of China,” the conservationist group posits, “Malaysians’ emotional involvement with sharks has been mostly recreational or gastronomical,” it explains. In…

The results are in and they are so-so. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has released its latest Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard, on which it has evaluated the performance of numerous companies worldwide based on how well they have done on fulfilling their pledged commitment to buying and using…

If you are a wild animal and you have an international day named after you, you’re in trouble. Rhinos are among those animals. World Rhino Day, on September 22, serves to celebrate these majestic animals, but it also serves to remind people that unless drastic steps are taken, several wild…

Water. Malaysia, being a tropical country with plenty of rainfall, has plenty of the life-giving substance. Or does it? Droughts have become increasingly common across the land with prolonged periods of water shortages in many badly hit areas in eight states. Two years ago Selangor was one of the states that were…

If you thought Malaysia’s tigers have had it hard, you might want to spare a thought for leopards. They’ve had it just as hard, if not worse. Here comes a new study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, that confirms just that. Indochinese leopards (Panthera pardus delacouri), which are a…

Sustainability must start at home. We are all familiar with this truism of environmental protection. Homes and offices are among the largest emitters of carbon dioxide, accounting for around 40% of both energy consumption and carbon emissions; that is why there is an increasing need for sustainable designs that are…

The island of Penang boasts beautiful beaches, which serve as magnets for tourists from far and wide. Unfortunately, those very beaches also draw plenty of developers who are eyeing prime coastal locations for ever newer developments that might well end up despoiling the local environment for good. Local conservationists have…

We are what we eat, a saying goes. We are also what we do. And what we do is continue to pollute our oceans and wind up eating poisoned fish as a result. There is some irony in that: the pollutants that we release wantonly into our seas often end…