Kuala Lumpur – Bukit Nanas/KL Eco Park?
Hi all! I’ve seen Bukit Nanas, now officially known as Kuala Lumpur Eco Park, often recommended as a place for mammal watching and to see primary forest, but most information about that is already more than ten years old. Worryingly, there are shockingly few reports of mammals from there on iNaturalist. Has the wildlife watching situation there changed over the past decade? Apparently it now has more developed tourist infrastructure and charges about US$10 to go in. On the possibly hopeful side, one city person writes on Google Maps reviews that “the forest is not well kept”.
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5 Comments
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Evan
Thanks! This helped me decide not to bother. A shame that mammals are so sparse there now – a real contrast to Jon’s 2008 report of “two Common Tree Shrews, a Grey-bellied Squirrel, Long-tailed Macaques and Selangor Silvered Langurs.” Maybe there’s increased human traffic there, or the new tourist infrastructure has disturbed it too much. What I read was that it’s technically primary forest, as it’s never been logged, but that the habitat has been degraded over time by “edge effects” of the forest being so small – not least because around half of it was demolished in the 1990s to build KL Tower (but that would have already been the case when Jon visited). As mentioned in my new comment below this post, I ended up going to the Perdana Botanical Gardens for treeshrews, which was a success.
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Ben W
Hi Evan, I went there last year and it wasn’t looking great, a few hours on the trails only turned up southern grey-bellied squirrels. There’s some introduced selangor silvered langurs as well, but I got the impression they aren’t wild and, more to the point, I couldn’t find them. To be honest I found the main KLCC park (marginally) better for mammals, mostly because you’re allowed in at night which adds SE Asian Palm Civets to the handful of species that can be found.
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Evan
Thanks for the reply, Ben – this was helpful! Though I’d like to get a decent photo one day, I saw a lot of palm civets in Vietnam a few months ago, and this time was more interested in treeshrews, which I somehow missed in Vietnam. As mentioned in my new comment below this post, I ended up going to the Perdana Botanical Gardens for that, and it was a success. One day I’ll have to go back to the area for langurs.
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Evan
Report-back: Thanks for the replies from Mattanja and Ben! I didn’t end up trying Bukit Nanas, but instead headed for the Perdana Botanical Gardens, also in the central area of the city (and free). My top target was actually Common Treeshrew (which I had missed in Vietnam earlier this year), and that was where most of the iNaturalists reports of it were clustered. It was a success – I found one treeshrew very quickly near the southeast corner of the gardens, and though the next couple hours dumped rain (plus lots of lightning), I found another treeshrew at the northern end near the amphitheater once it died back down to a drizzle. The only other mammal I saw there, except humans, was a Plaintain Squirrel, though as mentioned this was all despite inclement weather. For someone who wants more of a compromise between natural habitat and mammal reliability, nearby Taman Tugu looked worth checking out. I didn’t get to explore the hiking trails, which I understand are located in decent secondary forest, but I did come across a large troupe of Long-tailed Macaques along the car road zig-zagging over the hill. This road also runs through lush vegetation, and as far as I could tell was open 24 hours (though I didn’t arrive via the official entrances), so may be worth a night walk/drive as well.
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Mattanja Peppelman
It’s not a great place to go for mammals. Opening hours restrict you a lot and you’ll mostly see some southern gray-bellied squirrels. It’s also secondary forest and a couple of the trails were closed just a month and a half ago (june 2026).
If you want to go to some nature in KL I’d go to FRIM (Bukit Lagong) or the area around the zoo. If you have time Kuala Selangor is very nice for a daytrip.