ABSTRACT
In industrialised countries, the establishment and continued existence of national parks and other conservation areas is justified in terms of their role in protecting natural ecosystems which would otherwise be altered by the pressures of industrial or agricultural development. In developing countries, the aim of protecting natural ecosystems is rarely sufficient to ensure that large areas of land will never be used for production. Awareness of the conservation functions of national parks and other protected areas, such as protection forests which safeguard watersheds of important rivers, is certainly increasing due to better education in the schools and more attention to the subject in the Indonesian and Malaysian media. The national parks and nature reserves in Indonesia and Malaysia have been carefully selected to preserve a representative sample of the ecosystems in both areas.
