The Habitat Penang Hill provides an accessible and strategic vantage point for our education and community engagement activities. Penang Hill is also the centre of a visionary bid by the Penang state government to nominate the forests of Penang Hill and adjacent protected areas as a UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Reserve. The Habitat Foundation and The Habitat Penang Hill provided funding and logistical support to the Penang Hill BioBlitz 2017 held in October 2017 which involved 117 local and international scientists and researchers. The BioBlitz helped generate fresh data on species richness which will strengthen the nomination of the proposed Biosphere Reserve. The Foundation is also funding the next stage which involves community and stakeholder engagement and the final preparation of the nomination dossier by members of the School of Biological Sciences at Universiti Sains Malaysia.
In line with the vision to establish Penang as a centre for biodiversity and sustainability research, The Habitat Foundation is also in the process of establishing a Research Centre on Penang Hill which would serve as a hub for international collaboration and rainforest research as well as a field-centre for specialised training for early career researchers and conservation practitioners.
Aside from Penang Island, our other work is focussed on conservation and research efforts in high conservation value areas in Peninsular Malaysia. We are currently engaged in conservation and community engagement initiatives in Perlis State Park and the buffer areas of Taman Negara National Park. In addition to this, we are helping to fund wildlife ecology studies of fruitbats and nectar-eating bats and the little studied nocturnal mammals, the Sunda colugo and Sunda slow loris. These studies cover several of the northern states of Peninsular Malaysia.
