Get ready for creative drone photography when playing in the small karst ponds of Perak. Photos courtesy of KINTA VALLEY WATCH
Those who love the great outdoors might sometimes trespass onto private land.
Because of the cost, owners of idle, undeveloped greenfields at times do not bother to build fences around their land and adventurers may knowingly or unknowingly tread onto someone’s property.
This is a common occurrence in Perak.
There are so many karst ponds in Perak and they can be among the most beautiful places to enjoy a bit of paddling.
They are small, no larger than the size of two football fields, but feature water so clear that you can see the vegetation beneath and fish swimming about.
Getting an up-close look at the dissolving rocks of a karst pond in Malim Nawar.
But most stunning are the rocks jutting out of the water that look like abstract art shaped by sculptors.
Believe it or not, these rocks are water soluble and geologists of Universiti Malaya determined in a 2002 research that they are dissolved by rainfall at a rate of as low as 0.2mm a year; so the karst formations you see are aeons old.
These dissolving rocks result in a weak carbonic acid solution in the stagnant pools around them and because of that, the growth of suspended algae in the water is suppressed, leading to the crystal clear water that is so enjoyable to paddle across.
A social group in Perak formed nearly a decade ago called Kinta Valley Watch, strives to highlight the geological and natural value of these karst ponds and in recent years, those who enjoy paddling have been frequenting these locations, launching kayaks and paddleboards for exploration and photography.
However, these areas are not public land. Some have been privately owned since the early 1900s, originally acquired for tin mining and passed down through generations.
Paddlers exploring a karst pond in Batu Gajah, Perak.
Some could have been acquired by Perak’s Menteri Besar Inc.
The bedrock of limestone and dolomite, not to mention possible subterranean rivers below, may make these lands unsuitable for development, explaining why some owners might not actively manage them.
But a trespass is still a trespass, explains civil lawyer Ong Yu Shin.
“In the tort of trespass, the law respects landowners’ absolute rights to their land. From below ground to the air above. That’s really how it is described in common law.
“But in hilly, rural areas, and depending on the specific conventions of the local community, there may be customs and socially acceptable instances of trespass that might even happen every day, such as kampung lanes,” he says.
First off, if there is a gate and a fence, Ong says it should be understood that the landowners do not condone unauthorised entry even if the gate is unlocked.
Even children can comfortably paddle around this sheltered karst pond.
And even if people have been walking or driving through a particular piece of private land for years, the landowner has all rights to forbid access to anyone at any time without needing to give a reason.
“Also, the landowner has the right to collect a fee from you if you go paddling on a lake on his land, hiking or camping or anything, just like how landowners have the right to rent out the use of their land.“If you don’t want to pay the fee, you have the freedom to leave,” Ong advises.
For more than 20 years, I have been trespassing into the oil palm estates of smallholders to reach faraway lakes several kilometres off the road.
There is a barb wire fence, but no gate and anglers driving 4x4 vehicles with kayaks or boats lashed to the roof have been going in since the 1980s.
Sometimes, I see the landowners’ workers collecting oil palm fruit bunches and I stop to say “hi”.
They like to ask questions about the kayak or paddleboard on my roof.
Once, their workers’ vehicle got caught in a deep rut along the dirt trail and I helped pull their vehicle out with my pickup truck.
No one has ever told me to leave the property.
On Perak’s karst ponds: you will find details on some of them if you were to make an Internet search for “limestone pinnacle lake of Malim Nawar”.
Never go in on your own; if you really want to see them, contact Kinta Valley Watch at 012-559 9112.
