This filepic shows Puan Sri Shariffa Sabrina Syed Akil at the Hulu Teranum Forest Reserve in Raub which was believed to have been affected by illegal logging. Photo: Bernama, taken from Star2
When a massive landslide hit the Karak Highway in Peninsular Malaysia in November 2015, she declared that this was due to the clearing of a nearby forest (something that the authorities denied).
When locals complained that waters near Taman Negara, Pahang, were getting silted up, she led a media expedition up the Tembeling river to expose the logging going on there.
She has spoken out against deforestation not only in Pahang, but also elsewhere.
I first met Puan Sri Shariffa Sabrina Syed Akil during a press conference highlighting logging at the Sungai Gapoi Forest in Karak. She seemed a bit like a city slicker slightly out of a place in a remote kampung, but she delivered a fiery speech about something she was clearly passionate about – saving the forests. And this is why we are featuring her as one of the remarkable women in Malaysia who have made a mark in their fields, in this case, the environment.
Ever since her youth, Sabrina has been a nature lover and an outdoor person.
Born and raised in Penang, one of her frequent “playgrounds” was Penang Hill where she often went trekking. She has also scaled, among others, Mount Kinabalu and Gunung Nuang in Selangor.
Thus, it was only natural that in 2010, Sabrina founded the environmental group Pertubuhan Pelindung Khazanah Alam Malaysia (Peka). Read more
