100 Years of Tropical Forest Research: The Story of the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (review)

The Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) and the author, Francis Ng, are to be congratulated on the production of a very timely and readable account of the history of research into the forests of Peninsular Malaysia over approximately the last 100 years.

Although FRIM in its present corporate form only came into existence in 1985, its predecessor, the Forest Research Institute (FRI) came into existence upon the completion of the main Institute building on abandoned mining land in Kepong in 1929. Even before that date, A. M. Burn Murdoch, Chief Forest Officer of the Federated Malay States & Straits Settlements, 1901–1915, had taken an interest in the research aspects of tropical forestry in the Peninsula.

The author might have gone even further back to J. R. Logan's lecture to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1848 on 'The probable effects on the climate of Pinang of the continued destruction of its jungle hills'. Published in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, Logan's lecture refuted the views of earlier observers of the forests of the Peninsula, such as Begbie of the Madras Artillery who, in his The Malay Peninsula (1834), opined that the heaviness of Penang's atmosphere was attributable to 'the undrained marshes and luxuriant jungle', in contrast to the better climatic conditions of Malacca and Singapore where much land had already been cleared.

At about the same time, in the late 1840s, the authorities in Singapore began to take note of the admirable insulating properties of gutta percha, essentially the latex from Palaquium gutta (Sapotaceae). Nor was the demand for gutta percha confined to its use as an insulator for recently developed undersea telegraph lines. Oxley in Singapore noted at the same time its use in capsules preserving vaccine against (presumably smallpox) virus. The estimated annual extraction of gutta percha in 1847 amounted to 300,000 kg. This was estimated to represent the felling of some 50,000 trees per year. The trees could not be tapped, as was later found possible for rubber, but had to be destroyed to access the latex.

By 1874, only four months after the Pangkor Engagement, the Singapore Governor, Sir Andrew Clarke, a strong proponent of the forward movement to become more involved in the affairs of the Peninsula, wrote to Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, requesting the services of a 'Scientific Botanist', '… not only on account of the interesting discoveries in Botany that might ensure, but also because our commercial interests might be considerably developed were the investigation to result in the economy or amelioration of any of the vegetable products of the Tropical World'.

Clarke's appeal fell on receptive ears in London, leading to the establishment of Botanic Gardens in Singapore and Penang. However, the naturalist and colonial administrator Sir Hugh Low in Perak in the late 1870s rapidly recognized the threats to the forests not only from gutta percha collection, but also from the widespread use of wood in the rapidly expanding tin mining industry, not to mention clearance of lowland forests for plantations. In the Perak State Council minutes of November 1879, Low recognized the importance of forest for the climate, hydrology and soil stability of the region, and prohibited felling and cultivation of certain key areas of forest near Larut, which survive to this day.

By the end of the century, sporadic regulations were in place in what were by then the Federated Malay States to prohibit the felling of gutta percha and protect other key species, such as merbau (Intsia palembanica) and chengal (Neobalanocarpus heimii), other than under government licence. Paradoxically, the effect of Low's 1892 ban on the felling of gutta percha was simply to drive collectors over the borders into other, 'unprotected' Malay States such as Kelantan and Trengganu, where these rules and regulations did not apply.

This then is...