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ENVIRONMENT
Are our hills alive with the sound of music? The Kinta Valley's stunning limestone hills are being scarred and cut down
by Fan Yew Teng
For me personally, it is also Salzburg, the beauty of which you�ve got to see to believe. In 1970 I was fortunate to be there in May, with yellow buttercups covering the fields everywhere, and those lovely castles on the surrounding hills. And music, of course. Austria � and for that matter Switzerland also � has always stuck in my mind as a country which knows how to live in harmony with her hills and mountains. As a matter of fact, the thriving tourism industry of Austria is based on the mountainous territory of the eastern Alps, the many snowfields, glaciers and snowcapped peaks, and the Danube River and the forests and woodlands. Kinta Valley's priceless heritage Except for the obvious weather difference, Ipoh and the Kinta Valley are similarly � perhaps even equally � blessed with lovely hills and mountains. Yes, our very own blue mountains! Of stunning beauty, glory and dignity. Awe-inspiring, even though most of us seem to take them for granted, oblivious perhaps to one of God�s greatest gifts to us, besides the raintrees in our midst and which our unelected local councils seem so eager to cut down from time to time � all in the idiotic name of development of course. I am a proud member of the Malaysian Karst Society based in Ipoh itself. The MKS is a non-profit NGO, formed to conserve karst areas in Malaysia. Karst is landscape underlain by limestone which has been eroded by dissolution, producing towers, fissures, sinkholes, etc. The word karst is German, the name of a limestone region in Slovenia. The MKS enlightens us that most of Malaysia�s limestone deposits are karst. In the Kinta Valley, for example, limestone hills � which are the limestone outcrops that we see � occupy only 0.2 per cent of the total limestone deposits. The rest is basement limestone, which is below the ground. Just imagine the great wonder of it all. God truly works in mysterious ways for our benefit, often. The Kinta Valley is home to the largest limestone deposits in the country. In no other city in Malaysia are these fantastic formations so visible or plentiful as in Ipoh. Aren�t we lucky? As the MKS has rightly reminded us, �The limestone outcrops that dominate Ipoh�s skyline are a feature that belongs to the whole nation and could be promoted as one of the nation�s principal attractions.� It won�t be difficult to convince you that limestone hills are of �great importance in scientific, aesthetic, historical and cultural terms.� The MKS however, has warned us that �these unique physical formations are currently being destroyed. Massive quarrying activities for aggregate and other products will eventually annihilate these wonders of nature.� The MKS is right to emphasise that the karst formations �are a unique natural heritage and a legacy that should be conserved and left for our future generations.� Nature's revenge Remember the recent landslides and rockfalls in the Bercham area which killed some people? The almost instinctive reaction from Perak State Exco Member Chang Ko You was that the victims were illegal settlers. Not a very intelligent response, and not looking at all at the big picture. First, on the question of illegal hillside or cave settlers, why didn�t the Perak State Government enforce the rules and regulations? Illegal settlers did not appear two months ago; they have been around for decades. So why this bellyaching about illegality? Second, Chang�s statement completely ignored the causes of rockfalls and landslides. As MKS president Philip Leong has pointed out, if the relevant state and city authorities had not allowed the use of explosives for quarrying activities, the incidence of such fatal occurences would most likely have been minimised. We have to remember that there is such a thing called �Nature�s Revenge�. When we ill-treat nature, when we mess with nature in the name of development through greedy exploitation for sheer profits, sooner rather than later, we will have to pay. Yes, it�s payback. When we cut the hills and trees indiscrimately, irresponsibly and even cruelly, we get massive landslides, as we have seen every now and then in different parts of our country. Remember the Pos Dipang tragedy in the Kinta Valley some years ago? Even the Highland Tower tragedy in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, 11 years ago, which killed more than 40 people, has been attributed to messing with nature. The legal rape of nature. In the final analysis, sustainable development simply means developing in harmony with and with deep respect for Mother Nature. Mother Nature is bountiful, beautiful and kind, but sometimes she can also get angry especially when humans try to be too clever: the disease of being smart without being wise and humble. In 1967 I was teaching in Tanah Rata in Cameron Highlands for six months. The climate then was cool, misty and mysterious � a rare and beautiful setting. Not any more. An experience beyond words I have seen the wonder of Mount Fuji from the bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka. I have also been privileged to see the Himalayas at sunrise while flying from New Delhi to Bangkok. I was able to experience the mystical while going up the Khyber Pass and travelling overland through the silent yet living mountains of Afghanistan and Iran. An experience beyond words, beyond the power of description � a sight to behold and to be enchanted by, when words are unnecessary, when silence has its own sound, its own voice and its own meaning � a meaning deeper than most others, when you hear the sound of the music of your soul. We in the Kinta Valley have been most fortunate to be endowed with some of the most lovely hills and mountains in the world. We can cut them all down and dot our landscape with limestone scars over the next 50 years, or we can fill them with music and meaning and mystery and beauty � for our eyes, our minds and our souls � forever. Ironically, the hills we neglect and exploit and slash today have all the substance and potential of bringing back the glory days of the Kinta Valley and perhaps even Perak itself. Make your choice. One thing we can be sure though: if our hills perish, we will perish too. I believe in the cosmic dance of karma. 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We can cut them all down and dot our landscape with limestone scars over the next 50 years, or we can fill them with music and meaning and mystery and beauty � for our eyes, our minds and our souls � forever.
