‘Caring For Our Forest’ Workshop to Mark World Habitat Day 2024   

A joint ‘green’ effort by BOH Plantations and Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre

BOH Plantations Sdn Bhd (BOH) and theTropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre (TRCRC) hosted a workshop, ‘Caring for Our Forest’, in conjunction with World Habitat Day this year.

Over 50 participants were hosted at the Elmina Rainforest Knowledge Centre for an insightful half-day workshop where they had an opportunity to sow the seeds of hope for a better tomorrow by doing their part to preserve Malaysia’s national treasure – our tropical forests.

Participants learnt about TRCRC’s core conservation work of safeguarding and nurturing native trees and how restoring degraded landscapes with native species is key to addressing the critical rate of biodiversity loss in Malaysia.

Participants were also given a guided tour of the Elmina Living Collection Nursery. This is where seeds from endangered, rare and threatened plants are collected, germinated and planted on TRCRC’s established sites to produce seeds and planting material for forest restoration projects.

All these efforts are aligned to TRCRC’s two-fold mission to conserve tropical rainforest plant species and to lead landscape-wide protection and forest restoration projects. TRCRC’s flagship projects are the Tropical Rainforest Living Collections in Merisuli, Sabah and Banun, Perak.

At Elmina, TRCRC is dedicated to enhancing urban biodiversity through various initiatives. They focus on restoring degraded landscapes as well as areas near river banks in the Selangor and Kuala Lumpur regions. Their efforts aim to promote ecological resilience and functioning habitats for local wildlife.

“TRCRC focuses on enhancing urban biodiversity by rewilding degraded lands in key urban areas identified through thorough site studies. Our approach emphasizes the principle of ‘right species at the right places’ to ensure successful planting and restoration,” said Intan Syafiqah Mohd Hamezan, Project Executive of TRCRC.

The Caring For Our Forest workshop was an opportunity to personally connect with urban biodiversity conservation efforts and saw participants getting first-hand experience in soil mixing and filling up polybags and transplanting seedlings into polybags.

For Saiful Naim Abdul Hamin and Rabiatul Adawiyah Zakaria, spending time with their two boys, Adam Solihin, aged 10 and Alif Daniel, aged 8, at the workshop was a morning well spent. “It was such a wonderful opportunity to expose our boys to nature and give them a first hand experience on how they too can play a part to care for our forest. They really enjoyed themselves transplanting the seedlings and learnt so many new things about the forest,” said Adawiyah.

Speaking at the event, Chen Chaw Chang, Chief Commercial Officer of BOH Plantations, said “ This joint effort by BOH and TRCRC is an extension of on-going initiatives to further enhance urban biodiversity and support sustainability efforts. The aim is to brew a better tomorrow for Mother Earth. These efforts reflect BOH’s brand direction where we are guided to be future thinking, mindful to nurture sustainabiliTEA and the connection with and between our communiTEA and always, Brewing for Tomorrow.

“Through the BOH Wish Tree initiative at BOH’s recent 95^th anniversary celebration, we donated RM 20,000 to TRCRC to fund the collection of 500 new seedlings to be nurtured for future tree planting exercises to enhance urban biodiversity,” he added.