Kuda laut yang menakjubkan boleh menjadi ikon pemuliharaan laut dan perubahan iklim. Bagi menarik minat rakyat Malaysia, seorang penyelidik mengkaji kepelbagaian budaya yang diamalkan. Diterjemahkan oleh Hanna binti Norhisam.
SETIAP KALI ahli pemuliharaan Reana Ng masuk ke kedai perubatan tradisional Cina (PTC), beliau akan dipandang aneh, katanya dengan ironi. “Mereka tahu anda tidak datang untuk membeli ubat tradisional… Mengapa sebenarnya anda datang ke sini?”
Tanpa menghiraukan pandangan mereka, Ng terus mengunjungi kedai-kedai sebegini. Sejak Mac lalu, pelajar Ijazah Sarjana ini telah mengumpul maklumat mengenai kepelbagaian penggunaan kuda laut dan bagaimana rakyat di Semenanjung Malaysia menggunakannya.
(Gambar: Kuda laut kering digunakan dalam Perubatan Tradisional Cina selama berabad-abad | Foto:Reana Ng)
[Updated 26 August 2021] The fascinating seahorse can be a marine conservation and climate change icon. To get Malaysians on board, a researcher looks at cultural practices.
WHENEVER conservationist Reana Ng walks into a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) shop, she gets a “look”, she says wryly. “They just know that you’re not coming in to buy traditional medicine…Why are you here?”
Undeterred, Ng continues to visit these shops. Since March, this Masters student has been gathering information on the many uses of seahorses and on how people in Peninsular Malaysia use them.
(Photo: Dried seahorses have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries | Image by Reana Ng)
From flowering plants to butterflies , invasive species are taking over Batu Caves. This alarming threat to the fragile limestone ecosystem needs addressing.
WE HAD trekked up Batu Caves for about 10 minutes when botanist Dr Ruth Kiew turned to me and asked, “Can you see the difference in the vegetation?”
“Between limestone and non-limestone vegetation, you mean?”
“Yes.”
I scanned the plants before me. This was pre-pandemic times and I had been researching limestone species from lists provided by Kiew.
(Photo: Invasive species threaten plants like the keladi (foreground), discovered only 2 years ago and found only on Batu Caves, says limestone specialist Ruth Kiew. ~ pic by SL Wong)
With new lockdowns and closure of international borders, wildlife has been an increasingly common sight in Malaysia’s urban areas. But what does this mean? This commentary was first published on Channel News Asia and is republished here with permission.
[First posted May 27, 2021]
WHO DOESN’T like animal videos? Malaysians certainly do.
With unending COVID-19 lockdowns, a subset of these have become social media favourites: Wild animals in urban areas.
Such visuals feed into the pandemic mantra of “Look how nature recovers when we humans are out of the picture”. But how true is that?
(Photo: Visuals of cute animals in human environments have been going viral during Covid-19; this one hasn’t but registers on the cute scale ~ Pic by Nuratiqah AR )
MANTANANI native Mohd Faizul bin Madali is twiddling his thumbs waiting for the pandemic to end and tourists to return.
He is a divemaster and has been without work since lockdowns began in March 2020, relying instead on his family to support him.
“Previously, my life was diving, eating, sleeping,” says the 22-year-old. “Now, it’s eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping.”
He says virtually everyone in his village of 100 people has been dependent on tourism. The same is true of the other, larger village on Mantanani, the only inhabited island of a small group off Sabah’s northwest coast.
Back to fishing
With tourists still unable to visit, many islanders have returned to fishing as a way to make a living. As Faizul remarks, there are very few alternatives: “Where else are we going to get an income if not from the sea?”
When asked if they use fish bombs, he is quick to respond: “No, no, no! Not any more.” If fish-bombing is taking place around the islands, he is adamant the perpetrators are “outsiders, maybe from Kota Kinabalu [on the mainland]”.
Faizul has reported to the authorities the intrusion of non-local fishing boats during lockdown, incensed that they used nets in shallow waters, destroying the coral.
“I felt sad because the coral used to be alive, but they killed it. Thank goodness there are laws [to tackle this]… Tourism also depends on corals being beautiful and healthy. Who wants to look at dead corals? And Chinese tourists are very particular!”
Faizul (second from right) joins other Reef Check Malaysia divers to “plant” new corals on a Mantanani reef destroyed by fish-bombing (All images: Adzmin Fatta / Reef Check Malaysia)
A certified “eco-diver”, Faizul is also part of Reef Check Malaysia’s Mantanani Youth Club, a capacity-building conservation initiative, and takes an active part in the NGO’s reef surveys.
Unlike other islanders, however, he has not turned to fishing to make ends meet: “How would I know how to do that? What I can do is bring people diving and teach them how to dive.”
With tourism hit by the pandemic and local people struggling to make ends meet, many fear a resurgence of this destructive fishing method.
AT THE sound of a muffled “boom”, the divers pause and look uneasily at each other and their divemaster. Luckily, the blast seems far enough for the group to continue exploring the colourful reef.
Fish-bombing is the stuff of nightmares for the diving industry in Sabah. Not only does it put off the tourists, it also devastates marine life and endangers the fishers themselves.
(Photo: An unexploded, homemade fish bomb off the Mantanani islands, Sabah | Image by: Adzmin Fatta / Reef Check Malaysia)
Are Malaysians fed up enough of river pollution to assert their environmental rights? Do they even know what these rights are?
ASTONISHINGLY, it happened again: Sungai Kim Kim in Johor was polluted once more in early March. And it happened smack on the second anniversary of the toxic waste disaster there that hospitalised 2,700 and cost RM6.4m to clean up.
While this recent episode was described by the Minister of Environment as “normal pollution” and not hazardous, it raises concerns and questions as to why any pollution has recurred.
Johoreans are not the only ones wondering this.
(Photo: The Barchats: Envirorights webinars on environmental rights drew 435 lawyers and members of the public. Facebook screenshot: Bar Council Committee on Environment and Climate Change)
