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Repairing the ecosystems damaged by the Asian tsunami should be a priority, say environmental organizations, if the longterm livelihood of devastated communities is to be secured. They are urging the international community to ensure that marine parks are maintained, some communities are shifted inland, and defensive buffer zones of mangrove are planted against future erosion…

Often, it takes a catastrophe to make us realise the importance of the environment. Reports are coming in from Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Sumatra that those coastal areas still covered by mangroves were relatively less affected by the tsunami. ONE of the emerging lessons of the earthquake-tsunami disaster is that mangroves and coral…

PETALING JAYA: Mangrove forests and other coastal vegetation can soften the impact of tsunamis, according to a Kuala Lumpur-based conservation group. Two reports from Sumatra have proven this fact, said Global Environment Centre (GEC) director Faizal Parish. “Farhan Ferrari, a community worker, reported to me on Thursday that five villages 100km to the south-east of…

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 (Bernama) — Environmentalists’ pleas to conserve mangroves to protect the ecosystem has gone unheeded for a long time. But today, apart from being the favourite habitats of birds, fish and microorganisms, mangroves are considered the best natural barrier to protect coastal communities from the onslaught of tsunamis. Global Environment Centre director…

A year after the tsunami destroyed vast stretches of Asia’s coastline, activists say little has been done to fix the damage caused by the surging waters, and devastated mangroves and agricultural land still await rehabilitation. In worst-hit Aceh province in Indonesia, the tsunami drastically changed the coastline, ripping out mangroves before slamming into forests and…

The Meliau Range in Sabah, covered in ultramafic forest, has researchers excited over new species of flora and fauna, discovered on a recent expedition into its depths. JONISTON BANGKUAI writes. TALK about the Meliau Range and many will likely mistake it for the more wellknown Maliau Basin in southern Sabah. The greatly unexplored Meliau Range…

Vast tracts of Indonesia’s peat swamps have been drained in a misguided attempt to turn them into rice plantations. Now the landscape burns every year, belching smoke and hastening global warming. Peter Aldhous investigates. Sitting in a small boat at the junction of two drainage canals, all I can see are walls of crumbling peat…

Piles of un-decomposed, waterlogged plant material known as peatlands cover about 3 percent of Earth’s land and freshwater surface area. But scientists and conservationists are just beginning to fully understand the role of peatlands in the environment. “Peatlands are relatively little studied compared to other ecosystems, partly because of the difficulty of access due to…

KUANTAN, Oct 13 (Bernama) — In his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa and the Indian Ocean in 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was recorded as telling his crew that forests, oceans and the earth are God-given treasures which will one day be destroyed by man’s greed….