Ng CKC, Ooi PAC, Wong WL, Khoo G. 2018. Ichthyofauna checklist (Chordata: Actinopterygii) for indicating water quality in Kampar River catchment, Malaysia. Biodiversitas 19: 2252-2274. The limnological habitats are receptors of pollution, thus local fish species richness is a plausible biological indicator to reflect the quality of a particular water body. However, database on species occurrence that corresponds with the water physico-chemistry constituents is often not available. The problem is compounded by the lack of species identification description to assist those working on river and freshwater resource conservation projects. This paper attempts to fill the gaps in the context of Kampar River drainage. Based on sampling exercises conducted from October 2015 to March 2017, an annotated list with visual data for 56 species belonging to 44 genera and 23 families is presented. The water physico-chemistry data is also summarized with the corresponding visual data of limnological zones studied. The species diversity results are further compared with other local drainages and the correlation between area size and their relationship is expressed by y = 17.627e0.0601x. This paper provides species-level identification information for front line practice and demonstrates how the fish taxonomy discipline can be adapted for practical application in freshwater resource monitoring and management.

Freshwater fish biodiversity is a precious natural asset in terms of economic, cultural and scientific interest. And yet, the inland freshwater ecosystem in Malaysia is declining at a far greater rate than terrestrial ecosystems in the tropics. What happened, and what is being done to address the crisis? This paper extracts findings from the latest literature and explores overarching issues pertaining to freshwater ichthyology in Malaysia. Various schools of thought on biogeography and some basic data are first discussed to characterise Malaysia's fish species distribution and diversity. Subsequently, fish research and conservation concerns are explicitly raised and discussed to reveal concerns affecting the research movement and freshwater habitat quality. It is hoped that this short review provides vital information to consolidate and drive effective national policies and programs for safeguarding the country's freshwater fish biodiversity.

Road and highway development can provide multiple benefits to society, but without careful planning, this development can result in negative social and environmental impacts. The 1,200 km Pan Borneo Highway project (PBH) in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, is constructing new highways and up-grading 2-lane roads to 4-lane highways. We assessed the potential impact of the PBH on communities using three width scenarios of 50m, 75m and 100m for planned highway alignments, and identified potentially impacted dwellings and community lands. We estimated that 65–93 villages will be impacted, and that 1,712–7,093 dwellings and 3,420–6,695 ha of community lands (e.g. paddy, oil palm smallholdings and rubber) may be lost to the PBH. Due to land tenure technicalities, many affected households may not get compensation for the loss of their homes and lands. The PBH will disproportionally impact Sabah’s Indigenous Peoples, with the Kadazandusun most affected. For this study to be constructive, we provide a low impact alternative alignment for a part of the PBH; discuss the socio-economic and cultural impacts of the PBH, and offer some perspectives on current planning procedures in Sabah to support more sustainable and equitable development.

El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a natural forcing that affects global climate patterns, thereon influencing freshwater quality and security. In the advent of a strong El Niño warming event in 2016 which induced an extreme dry weather in Malaysia, water quality variation was investigated in Kampar River which supplies potable water to a population of 92,850. Sampling points were stratified into four ecohydrological units and 144 water samples were examined from October 2015 to March 2017. The Malaysian Water Quality Index (WQI) and some supplementary parameters were analysed in the context of reduced precipitation. Data shows that prolonged dry weather, episodic and sporadic pollution incidents have caused some anomalies in dissolved oxygen (DO), total suspended solids (TSS), turbidity and ammoniacal nitrogen (AN) values recorded and the possible factors are discussed. The month of March and August 2016 recorded the lowest precipitation, but the overall resultant WQI remained acceptable. Since the occurrence of a strong El Niño event is infrequent and far between in decadal time scale, this paper gives some rare insights that may be central to monitoring and managing freshwater resource that has a crucial impact to the mass population in the region of Southeast Asia.

Abstract. Ng CKC, Abdullah F, Biun H, Ibrahim MK, Mustapha S, Sade A. 2017. Review: A working checklist of the freshwater fish diversity for habitat management and conservation work in Sabah, Malaysia,. Prioritization of freshwater habitat management and conservation is dependent on the availability of species baseline information at regional level. However, such information has not been updated since 2002 in Sabah. Thus the objective of this paper is to present the latest working checklist of freshwater ichthyofauna known so far in the state. A literature review of 68 studies was conducted focusing on the latest valid binomial nomenclature, locality and conservation status. A total of 166 valid species, namely 150 native species and 16 introduced species, were deduced from the literature. Native species comprised of 10 orders, 27 families and 75 genera while introduced species were from four orders, seven families and 14 genera. The review revealed 103 species (68.6% of native species) were yet to be assessed for the IUCN Red List and 11 species (7.3%) were identified as Data Deficient by IUCN. Some taxonomic discrepancies were also found and discussed. Many areas in Sabah remain poorly inventoried due to unequal sampling effort, biophysical and cultural challenges. The species list proposed herein is tentative at best and the number of species is expected to increase as more surveys are conducted in the near future.