Universiti Teknologi Malaysia centre for innovative planning and development director Prof Amran Hamzah said Malaysia is a hot-bed for the world's rarest iconic natural attractions and serves as a tourist magnet.
The country has attractive locations with vast potential for development as eco-tourism icons, according to a development planning expert.
Malaysia's natural attractions would lure inernational tourist to the country and will be spellbound by the unique flora and fauna, clean beaches, exotic marine life, oldest rainforest and the world's biggest caves.
Currently, Amran said Sabah and Sarawak were the country's largest contributors to the eco-tourism industry as compared with Peninsular Malaysia, as they had the world's rarest iconic attractions.
For example, he said the Mulu National Park in Sarawak, and Mount Kinabalu and Sipadan Island in Sabah were deemed among the world's top five locations for scuba diving activities.
"Tourists will come to Sabah and Sarawak because they know they can find the orang utan in Sepilok or Kinabatangan where there is a unique range of eco-tourism attractions."
Amran said there were many high potential places in the peninsula, including national parks, which were either under-developed or over-developed. Among the places were Tanjung Piai in Johor, Royal Belum (Perak), Bera and Chini Lakes in Pahang, he noted.
He said eco-tourism activities could be the source of high income for the country, as well as local residents. However, the growing passion to develop eco-tourism attractions could also lead to negative impact on the environment and the people, if the source of wealth was badly-managed.
"Eco-tourism means, we should add value to the source of wealth and the people. They should get the highest revenue. If it means that the people will be sidelined, then, we will fail," he said.
Amran said planning, management and systematic monitoring should be done to prevent massive destruction of the environment because the country was capable of developing its eco-tourism industry.
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