Malaysia began cutting down her rain forests in the late Nineteenth Century on the island of Borneo.  Most areas were logged indiscriminately to provide timber for railroad ties and to make room for rubber, tobacco and oil palm plantations.  The indigenous people of the region could no longer use the forest for their livelihood and they became workers on the plantations.  Timber exports continued to grow into the 1980's; in 1950 timber accounted for less than ten percent of all exports from Sabah, but by the 1970's this had skyrocketed to over seventy percent.
Rubber tree in plantation collecting sap(Photo by T Sinclair)

Peninsular Malaysia has not been as reliant on timber revenues as those of Sabah and Sarawak.  Although one sixth of the forests had been cut down by 1957, it was done gradually and on a small, localized scale.  In Pahang and Terengganu foreign investment led to more logging and conversion to rubber and palm oil plantations.  Today over forty percent of the Peninsula's remaining forests are being cleared for plantation purposes or partially logged.

Once the trees are removed, soil erosion follows.  The rivers become polluted by topsoil run-off and siltation. The Tahan and Tembeling Rivers are very brown, indicating just such activity near Taman Negara.

As a result the Orang Asli in the area have less fish in the river and less wildlife for their food supply.  Many trees that contain fruits used in the diet of the aborigines have been logged.

Although the Malaysian government has passed laws to limit deforestation, the logging output is still estimated to stand around five million cubic meters a year through the 1990's, which leaves around 50,000 square kilometers of forest out of a total surface area of 131,700 square kilometers--the remainder vanishing at the rate of nearly 1000 square kilometers per year.

Most environmentalists within Malaysia don't believe that it is possible to replant the forests successfully.  As a rule, logging devestates over seventy percent of all the flora, topsoil and root structures in a given area.  Once the plants are missing, the rest of the food chain follows. Rates of rain forest destruction around the world  http://www.ran.org/info_center/factsheets/04b.html
Rain forest destruction
World Rainforest Movement and the causes of rainforest destruction

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