What a shame your item 'Hard hats save Malaysian rainforest' is anonymous (This Week, 26 September). The author surely deserves recognition for cramming so much misinformation in so few lines.
Pasoh is a forest reserve under the auspices of The Forestry Research Institute Malaysia and as such is not even remotely threatened by logging. The walkway was commissioned (and paid for) by Japanese researchers looking into plant physiology. The assertion that 'tramping over the forest floor' causes nearly as much damage as logging, is patently preposterous (ever seen a bulldozer in action?), particularly in the context of Pasoh, where weeks may pass between visitors, and where there are currently no resident scientists.
The most ludicrous statement is that 'scientists and tourists . . . can look down on tigers, in their natural habitat'. Disregarding the total lack of recent records of tiger at Pasoh, it is difficult to imagine how ...
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