In fight for Shah Alam forest, can activists replicate a win?

Early one Saturday morning in November, a team of six conservationists set out from a restaurant in Shah Alam, the capital city of Malaysia’s Selangor State, and headed for the forest. The team included a reptiles researcher, a topographer and two consultants assisting with setting up camera traps, which photograph wild animals that trigger a motion sensor. 

There were also two members of the Shah Alam Community Forest Society, which had brought the team together to map and survey the terrain and biodiversity of the rainforest.

The Shah Alam Community Forest is a rare green space in highly developed Selangor. The forest is home to flowering and semi-evergreen trees, and endangered animals. It forms a crucial potential wildlife corridor between the Bukit Cherakah Forest Reserve to the north and the Shah Alam National Botanical Garden to the south. While visitors regularly hike its trails, the Shah Alam forest ecosystem is largely undisturbed by human activity.

However, this may soon change...