Pahang: The Pahang government has identified several forest areas to be proposed as new Permanent Forest Reserves (HSK) to balance development needs with environmental conservation, the State Assembly was told today. Pahang Menteri Besar Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail announced that the state executive council approved an application on April 22 to gazette government land within the Central Forest Spine Ecology network, namely the Bera Forest Reserve and the Bera Ramsar Reserve, as HSK areas involving a total of 524 hectares.
According to BERNAMA News Agency, the total area of Pahang is 3.60 million hectares, while the size of the Permanent Forest Reserves currently stands at 1.589 million hectares, representing 44.13 percent of the state's total land area. One of the state government's key policies through the Pahang Forestry Department is to implement the concept of Sustainable Forest Management in forest management. Wan Rosdy emphasized the importance of ensuring that any HSK area degazetted for economic development purposes would be replaced with another forest area of equivalent value.
He stated that the current state policy requires every approval for degazettement to be accompanied by a replacement area, stressing the need for the forestry department to confirm the availability of replacement areas before granting approvals. Approximately 762,000 hectares, or 49 percent of the total HSK area, are classified as production forests for sustainable forest product activities, while about 820,000 hectares, equivalent to 51 percent, are protected forest areas that cannot be logged.
Wan Rosdy responded to a supplementary question on compensation received for forest conservation efforts by revealing that Pahang had received about RM72 million in ecological fiscal transfer allocations through federal government project grants since 2022. He has also requested Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to provide the allocation in cash, or at least 50 percent in cash and the remainder in projects. However, so far, all allocations have been channeled in the form of projects.