I read of the government planning this new highway to Terengganu from Ipoh and commend the initiative to deliver development to the east-coast states that have been isolated in the past.
However, I would like to request that the highway design take into account the environmental aspects of the land it will traverse. Here in Selangor, we have experienced the fragmentation of many forest reserves by unfortunate alignments that transect them rather than going around them.
This compromises their capacity as biodiversity reserves and delivers easy access to illegal loggers, hunters and poachers. The highway leading to Shah Alam through Puncak Alam is a sad example, where many tapirs have become road kill and the capacity of the forest reserve to protect wildlife has been severely depleted.
Other areas adjacent to the highway have been flooded as there is insufficient drainage allowed for under the road, causing unnecessary die-back of forests adjacent to the highway.
With crossings for animals under a fully-fenced highway and appropriate drainage being provided, these problems could be eliminated. Obviously, we at the Malaysian Nature Society would prefer that all forest reserves be left as such and that road alignments take into account the need to keep these areas sufficiently large and contiguous with other forested areas to support large animal populations.
The route to be traversed by the new highway is one of the last strongholds of the Malayan tiger, and hopefully the designers of the highway are aware of this. According to current estimates, there while there are only 61 tigers in Taman Negara, the surrounding areas provide essential buffers and corridors for access to other breeding populations, without which the tiger will be sorely taxed to breed into the next century.
You may recall that many tigers were killed unnecessarily when the East-West highway first opened, and I do hope that this will not be the case again with the new East Coast Expressway.
The writer is the chairperson of the Malaysian Nature Society (Selangor).
