Protecting the Forest and Its Fauna against Local Residents in British Malaya
Abstract
In the early 20th century, the conservation of the wild fauna of the Empire became a concern for the British government, which set aside large areas to create parks, reserves, and wildlife sanctuaries. The main supporter of this effort in Malaya was Theodore Hubback, a former big game hunter and game warden, who was instrumental in creating two large protected areas in Pahang: the Krau wildlife reserve and the King George V National Park. These projects threatened the rights of local populations who used the forest and its products, but forest dwellers and Malay villagers made claims for access with the support of the sultans, especially Sultan Abu Bakar of Pahang, and the regulations for the National Park and wildlife reserves took their needs into account. Intense negotiations involving different factions within the colonial administration, the sultans and their courts, and local inhabitants forced proponents of the preservation of the fauna to make concessions which, in the long term, appear to have been beneficial for the conservation of wildlife.
This article is an updated version of an article published in French under the title ‘Proteger la foret et sa faune contre les indigenes en Malaya britannique’ in the journal Peninsule, no. 75, in 2017. The translation was prepared by Colin Dyer and Mathieu Guerin, and the article is published with permission of Peninsule.
Summary
This article examines how the creation of large wildlife reserves and the King George V National Park in British Malaya during the 1920s and 1930s generated sustained conflict with local populations who depended on forest resources for their livelihood, and how prolonged negotiations among the colonial administration, Malay sultans, and inhabitants ultimately shaped the regulations governing access to these protected areas. The central figure is Theodore Hubback, a former big game hunter turned game warden who designed the Krau and Gunung Tahan reserves and championed the National Park project, but whose absolutist conservation stance—insisting on the complete exclusion of humans from protected zones—brought him into direct collision with the communities whose lives were disrupted.
Guérin’s core argument is that these protected areas were not simply imposed by colonial power but emerged from a complex process of negotiation in which the fault line ran not between the British and the Malays, but between those who defended local inhabitants’ access to the forest and those who positioned themselves first and foremost as protectors of wildlife. The sultans, particularly Sultan Abu Bakar of Pahang, played a decisive mediating role: they supported the creation of the parks while simultaneously forcing the Game Department to recognise pre-existing rights of access, fishing, and collection. The article draws heavily on archival correspondence between the sultans and British administrators, minutes of village meetings conducted by the District Officer for Lipis in 1939–40, and petitions from forest-dwelling peoples, all of which reveal the agency of local communities and the diversity of their forest use—ranging from jelutong latex tapping and gambier collection to buffalo grazing, fishing, and the maintenance of ancestral cemeteries within the reserved zones.
The article also demonstrates that the colonial administration’s racialised categorisation of forest peoples as ‘Sakai’ or ‘savages’ paradoxically facilitated their access to the parks, as they were perceived as part of the natural world being preserved rather than as economic actors whose claims needed to be negotiated. This distinction in treatment between the Batek and Che Wong (who were allowed to live in the reserves, clear swiddens, and hunt small game) and the Malay villagers (who received more limited, permit-based privileges) was itself a product of the negotiations and was not a fixed given.
Key Findings
- The Krau game reserve comprised 53,000 hectares (gazetted 1923) and the Gunung Tahan reserve 143,000 hectares (1925); the King George V National Park spanned over 4,300 sq km across Pahang, Terengganu, and Kelantan, and was formally constituted in 1938–39 (pp. 60–63).
- Article 16 of the Royal Orders establishing the National Park, added at the insistence of the Sultans of Pahang and Terengganu, stipulated that the Trustees could authorise the continued enjoyment of pre-existing privileges—way, fishing, collecting produce—by communities living on or near the park borders (pp. 19–20).
- The colonial government’s financial contribution to the National Park was $500 per year; the Sultan of Kelantan ceded 198,300 acres (80,249 hectares) in perpetuity (pp. 63–64).
- In 1935, Sultan Abu Bakar granted a Kuasa to Batin Sidah permitting the Che Wong of his tribe to enter and leave the Krau Reserve at any point, in exchange for reporting poaching of big game (p. 21).
- Hubback was dismissed in 1936 after publishing open criticism of the administration’s lack of support for wildlife conservation; his project was completed by Edward Oswald Shebbeare and High Commissioner Shenton Thomas in 1938–39 (pp. 63–64).
- The 1921 Wild Animals and Birds Protection Enactment for the Federated Malay States established game departments headed by European game wardens and enabled the creation of reserves and sanctuaries (p. 60).
Conclusion
Guérin concludes that the concessions won through negotiation—particularly the sultans’ insistence on Article 16 and the recognition of forest peoples’ rights to remain in the reserves—ultimately reinforced the long-term effectiveness of the protected areas. The King George V National Park was maintained after independence as Taman Negara, poaching remained limited for a long period, and gaurs and tigers persist in the park today. The integration of local populations into the conservation scheme, rather than their simple exclusion, is presented as a key factor in the parks’ durability.
Context
- Primary archival collections: National Archives of Malaysia (ANM), including dossiers from the colonial archives of Kelantan, Pahang, and the Federated Malay States; The National Archives (UK), Colonial Office papers (CO 576, CO 717).
- Historiographical contribution: Challenges the persistent narrative of Malay sultans as passive instruments of British colonial rule, demonstrating instead their active role in shaping conservation policy and defending the interests of their subjects. The article also contributes to the environmental history of colonial Malaya by centring the perspectives of forest-dwelling peoples and Malay villagers rather than treating them as passive recipients of colonial policy.