Malaysia’s permanent forest reserves measure slightly over 18 million hectares around the country. They are home to 2.5 million trees. The government says it wants to boost that number to 4 million trees through its Sustainable Forest Management scheme. “[W]e held firmly to our commitment to maintain at least 50…

Illegal logging, despite efforts to stamp it out, continues unabated in the forests of Terengganu. What to do? Rosli Zakaria, an environmentalist based in the scenic state, has an idea: ban chainsaws. Existing protection measures by forestry officials, including the use of surveillance drones, have thus far proved insufficient in…

Few activities have inflicted as much damage on Malaysia’s environment as logging, but that may be about to change. Come 2018, logging will be allowed only in a few designated areas with the rest of the country’s trees finally declared off-limits once and for all to chainsaws and axes. That…

A recent sizing-up of illegal logging in Malaysia revealed that the Forest Department of Sarawak conducted 240 raids, confiscated 12,000 cubic meters of timber and submitted a total of 122 investigation papers to the state government as of July this year. Much of this legal action has to do with…