Malaysia Looks at Tougher Rules to Save Coastal Birds
Date: 12-Sep-07
Country: MALAYSIA
Author: Clarence Fernandez
Farms, homes and industry have sprung up along Malaysia's
coasts, depriving migratory birds of key winter homes, leading
to a 22 percent fall in the number of shorebirds recorded in
the two decades to 2006, conservation group Wetlands
International said.
Malaysia will tighten environmental regulations to avoid
similar future mistakes, Environment Minister Azmi Khalid said.
"Of course, wetlands, people have turned that into prawn
farms, fish farms, without regard," he said at a function in
the Malaysian capital.
"But today we are aware, my god, we have done the wrong
thing. So now governments are very aware of this. All approvals
are now being looked at very seriously by all state
governments."
The state of Malaysia's vanishing wetlands mirrored the
situation with its 189 river basins, just half of which were
still intact, while another five percent were too polluted for
even a fish to survive, Azmi said.
"In the process of development we have overlooked these
issues," he added.
The move for closer scrutiny was part of a growing
government consensus that environmental policy needed to be
overhauled, Azmi said. He also said there were concerns the
environment ministry did not have enough say in projects from
highways to town planning.
"I'm told that inputs from the environment ministry are
minimal, up to only the environmental impact assessments
(EIAs), which is not enough. We don't have enough enforcement
powers."
The format of Malaysia's environmental impact assessments
dated to the 1970s and the ministry would consider revising it
if necessary, Azmi added.
Environmentalists welcomed the move for closer scrutiny,
but said that unless Malaysia identified and protected critical
biodiversity areas in its development plans, wetlands would
still be at risk from property developers who saw them as a
bargain.
"Some people doing development like to go and grab the
cheap areas which may be state land, or where they drain
wetlands, because they feel they can get them for free or
cheaply," Faizal Parish of the Global Environment Centre, a
Malaysian non-profit group, told Reuters.
Wetlands International said Malaysian coasts were key
wintering grounds for endangered species such as the Nordmann's
Greenshank, which numbers between 500 and 1,000 birds, and the
Chinese egret, whose population ranges from 2,600 to 3,400.
The group's two-year survey, ending in 2006, studied 134
sites in Malaysia, recording more than 105,000 birds.
The worst-hit region was the coast of the northern state of
Perak, which saw an 86 percent decline from a similar survey in
the 1980s. There were also dramatic falls on the west coast of
Johor and in Selangor, the area around the Malaysian capital.
