STRAITS SETTLEMENTS. 
Paper to be laid before the Legislative Council by Command of 
Mis Excellency the Governor. 
Annual Report on Forest Administration in the Straits 
Settlements, for the Year 1915. 
PART I. 
Extension and Constitution of Reserved Forests. 
i. The total area of reserved forests at the end of the year was 100,31 1 acres or 
156*7 square miles. Three thousand eight hundred and thirty acres in the Dindings 
were notified in the Gazette as proposed reserves but remained unsettled at the end 
of the year. Particulars as to areas of reserved forests in the different parts of the 
Colony appear in the following table : — 
Locality. 
Area. 
Area of 
Reserved Forests. 
Proportion 
to whole area. 
* , 
Square miles. 
Square miles. 
Per cent. 
Singapore * ... 
206 
i9'5 
9*5 
Penang 
• m * 
IO7 
180 
16*8 
Province Wellesley ... 
288 
5*6 
1*9 
Dindings 
265 
36-4 
13*7 
Malacca .... 
** * * • 
720 
• 
77-2 
10*7 
% 
Total ... 
• 
1,586 
1567 
9*9 
2. The only new area finally gazetted was one of 680 acres in the Dindings 
known as the Gunong Tunggal Reserve. 
No further areas were disforested, the apparent reduction in the area of reserves 
in the Dindings as compared with 1914 being due to the erroneous inclusion of the 
proposed Batu Undan Reserve (see section 3) in the 1914 report. The land dis- 
forested from the Sembawang and Mandi Reserves in Singapore for military purposes 
in 1914 remained unused and in the same condition as before it was taken over. 
3. The proposed Batu Undan Reserve in the Dindings, which was. surveyed in 
1914 and found to contain 3,830 acres, was still unsettled at the end of 1915. The 
reservation of a few other small areas was under consideration at the close of the year. 
These include an addition of about 340 acres of mangrove to the South Seletar Re- 
serve in Singapore, a strip of mangrove of unascertained extent on the West coast of 
Penang Island, and an extension of about 130 acres to Government Hill Reserve, also 
in Penang, the object of the latter being to retain for protective purposes what little 
forest still remains on the crests of the hills in the Balik Pulau District. 
# ' , 
The extension of cultivation in the south-west corner of Singapore Island again 
attracted attention to the forests in that part of the Settlement, and it is desirable that 
the tops of the higher hills, some of which are covered with virgin forest, should not be 
alienated, even if they are not included in forest reserves. One prominent hill near 
9 * 
