Kuala Selangor Nature Park

The park covers about two hundred and forty hectares at the mouth of the Selangor river - mangrove on the seaward side, a brackish lake system behind it, and secondary forest on Bukit Melawati, the hill with a lighthouse and an old fort on it. Silvered leaf monkeys live around the hill and are habituated to the point of taking food from hands; the young are bright orange, which is what people photograph, and the feeding is a matter of some debate among people who care about wild primates. The bird list runs past a hundred and fifty species with migratory waders on the mudflats. The other thing here is upriver at Kampung Kuantan: synchronous fireflies, Pteroptyx tener, live in the berembang mangrove along the banks and flash in unison after dark, and small boats are rowed out among them - one of the more reliable such displays in Southeast Asia.

History

Virgin mangrove grew at Kuala Selangor until the 1940s, but from 1965 to the 1970s land was cleared for salt evaporation ponds, and in 1986 more was cleared for a marina, a prawn farm and a golf course; the park now covers 2.4 square kilometres of secondary forest and wetland (Wikipedia, Kuala Selangor Nature Park).

Highlights

• Silvered langurs - habituated troops with bright orange young around the hill.
• Synchronous fireflies - flashing in unison in the mangrove upriver after dark.
• Mangrove and brackish lakes - some two hundred and forty hectares at the river mouth.
• Bukit Melawati - the hill with a lighthouse and old fort above the park.

When to go

All year; dark moonless nights for fireflies. A day.

What to expect

Firefly boats depend on weather and moon and are cancelled in rain; take the rowed boats, not the motorised ones, which disturb them. Feeding the monkeys is discouraged and they bite. Mosquitoes are severe.

Nearby

Kampung Kuantan firefly park is upriver; Sekinchan's paddy fields are north.

Key facts