Several mangrove areas
were clear-felled and converted to non-mangrove land use as a
result of trespassing. The mangrove forest covers an area of more
than 40,000 ha, and this makes it a wide boundary area to be
administered by the management of the Matang Mangrove Forest.
Consequently, trespassing into the gazetted area was executed
without any difficulty. The emergence of settlement areas within
the mangrove forest reserve area was mainly due to cockle culture.
Development of cockle culture started in the early 1930s when the
settlers realized that mudflats were suitable for cultivation of
cockles (Lim and Mohamad Parit, 2001).