Author(s)

O. Jamilah, A. K. Nur Emira, R. A. R. Nur Fatin

Abstract

The ecological landscape is among the factors that may implicate tourists’ visitations to a nature-based landscape of the highland environment. It is found that the natural beauty of certain natural resources makes a significant contribution to the development of nature-based tourism. Sustainable landscape management could be essential to continuously maintaining the rich biodiversity of an ecosystem. This study assesses the correlation of the scenic beauty of Fraser’s Hill to its ecological landscapes. The natural heritage of Fraser’s hill can be identified through its unique ecosystems (e.g. forest, waterfall and lake) that house varieties of flora and fauna. This study adopted the perception-based paradigm, in which the public were the respondents. The necessary data was collected using: 1) a photographic questionnaire survey (non-locals public); 2) a questionnaire survey (in situ tourists). Previous to this, an exploratory field observation (EFO) was carried out on site to determine the potential ecological attributes of the area. The results of the questionnaire survey show that the ecological attributes (e.g. hilly landform, greenery and water elements) have implicated the scenic beauty of Fraser’s Hill. Similarly, the results obtained from the second method agree that the ecosystems (e.g. lake and water fall) with ecological attributes are most preferred. Findings show that there is a high agreement on the scenic beauty of the natural and historical heritage. The insights provide quantitative information that may implicate the sustainability of a highland environment, highland best management practices, local authorities, the economic value, the tourism industry and many more. Most importantly, the findings suggest that scenic beauty can be an indicator of a healthy ecosystem that may further sustain other sensitive environments of Malaysia.

Keywords

sustained, healthy ecosystems, scenic indicator, highland environment