In his post, that has since gone viral with over hundreds of comments from concerned netizens and more than 2,200 shares on the platform, the journalist said "the issue is of national importance" and urged local media to report about it to bring it to the attention of our elected representatives.



"Say we have a large collection of precious manuscripts in a library — a national treasure! Now they are burning the library," the journalist philosophised on his post, referring to trees as manuscripts.



According to the viral post, an 84-year-old retired planter's forest in Tanjung Malim with two million rainforest trees, many of which do not exist anywhere else, is now being destroyed for development.



The journalist, Jules Rahman Ong, makes films about marginalised communities and helps runs a public Facebook group called Fighting for Our Forest with an environmental activist named Tracy Toh.



According to the group, Fighting for Our Forest aims to "support the Temiar people in their struggle to protect the forest from deforestation and invasion of their ancestral land".