Forest Resource Exploitation in Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia's forest ecosystem has been undergoing rapid changes in the past twenty five years both in terms of depletion of total acreage due to large scale land development and deterioration of its quality due to extensive logging activities in lowland and upland areas. Such rapid changes have brought about serious implications on the ecosystem as well as on the timber industry in light of the fact that rapid exploitation of the resource has not been accompanied by a satisfactory rate of regeneration. This paper examines these changes as a result of land use policy, technological improvements in timber extraction and market trends of timber products; the biological implications on the forest ecosystem and the future commercial implications on the timber industry and export.