KUALA LUMPUR: Significant changes to Malaysia's green laws may be presented in Parliament this year, with an aim to better protect the country's flora and fauna.
"What I'm looking at is for all these laws to be realised within 2016," Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar told reporters here.
He said this after meeting with Forestry Department officials at their headquarters, where suggestions to amend green laws were raised there and then.
Some of these changes may include making loggers to help replant forests they've cut, and giving forest rangers jurisdiction over animal traps, which wildlife officers naturally focus on.
Junaidi said these changes were being thought of in light of a 50% forest cover pledge that has Malaysia has made in previous years, including at the COP21 United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015.
He added that land and forest use – an area controlled by states and not the Federal Government – could make it difficult for Malaysia to keep this pledge.
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