Just the other day when my dad was visiting K.L., I decided to bring him to Gasing Hills for a run. A gazetted nature reserve and an important green lung of Kuala Lumpur, I frequent it quite often for a dose of intense oxygen therapy (otherwise huffing and puffing), good old sweat and just to relax my mind abit seeing greens instead of concrete all the time...much to my horror...the session was not one of immense relaxation or tranquility but of absolute horror! There was concrete in the middle of a nature reserve that plucking a leaf reputedly can land you in trouble with the law??? What's this?
The local park council has never failed to induce a slew of expletives from me ...if they go on a clearing campaign...say on the side of a stream, they clear everything in their path...whether good or bad...sometimes when a stream has a healthy just slightly overgrown of wild plants...trust them to come along and clear everything to a point of sterility...killing what could be a nestbed of little insects that keep the ecology in good balance and also being a good waste treatment plant...cleaning the water that pass by the roots. Yes, it's a wild fantasy of mine that every city council worker be an educated ecologist and love the environment to boot but come on...must they really be that stupid???
Anyway...as I was running in gasing....I found it weird...the normally mere soil path was boarded as if to construct something.Then I saw it...the horrors of horrors...they were building retention walls across the stream that flowed along the walking trail in gasing....how STUPID is that? Once...the banks where we walk would drop gently into the stream and between the path and the stream there'll be a rich mix of foliage and left litter that houses all sort of animals....now what you get is an ugly grey limestone cement retention wall...with no plants and the stream that once was a wonder with little pebbles and tadpoles become like any other longkang...sterile...robbed of life....I am so angry!!!! Why did they do it? Was it because there was uncontrolable soil erosion that could cost a jogger his life? I heard of building retention walls to avoid landslides but this is ridiculous....
See for yourself....in the pictures....
sadly....Gasing has become a rather unappealing place now...
Damn you stupid panda company...WWF....World Wildlife Fund for Nature...damn you...being 'supposed' custodians of the environment and having your badge at the entrance of the trail, shouldn't you be there to ensure that this doesn't happen?
Or are you too busy and understaff cause all your damn staff are opening little booths at shopping malls to collect money for administration expenses....
To cap it off...there was a pathetic sign...save nature...blah blah blah...empty rhetorics....
To any of you who feel as strongly....add to my comments and if I am not alone in this I will foward this blog and the comments to the bloody authorities...and of course...the stupid panda...if any of you support the stupid panda...feel free to counter me...