A man recently made a heart-breaking appeal on social media to stop a group of individuals from taking the fish he had painstakingly raised in a city orchard.
Following the death of his son, Yen Maseri Idris, also known as Uncle Yen on Instagram, devoted seven years of his life to his passion project, tending to a little plot of land close to a storm drain next to the Bukit Kiara Muslim Cemetery.
To cope with the loss of his son, Uncle Yen had planted and revitalised the area with fruit trees and created a habitat for riverine wildlife including fish and monitor lizards.
But recently, people with fishnets came to harvest what Uncle Yen had sown, and he was afraid that this may upset the delicate ecosystem he had so carefully managed.
Uncle Yen was seen and heard pleading with the individuals in a Instagram video to stop taking the fish. “You just came and took it, I fed the fish every day.”
He also revealed in another video that one of the monitor lizards had been killed by the visitors as well.
“The monitor lizard, identified as “Mr. Brown,“ was found dead across the river; it had been killed by the “Jala” people.” He observed.
“People don’t realise how difficult it is to maintain and nourish the ecosystem”, a number of online users said in response to the post. “Although it is a public space, you cannot fish there at your leisure.”
“Just because you can, does not mean you should,“ another person wrote.
How do you feel? How can Uncle Yen handle this circumstance in order to protect the ecology he has worked so hard to create?
