Last year, Mongabay.com reported that a tree with a compound found to inhibit HIV, Calanolide A, was almost lost to science. The plant was initially collected by pharma botanists from the National Cancer Institute in 1987. When scientists discovered that the compound could be used to fight HIV, they returned to Borneo to find that none of the trees remained. Scientists eventually found the tree had been collected by the Singapore Botanic Garden and the research was able to proceed. Calanolide A is currently in animal and in-vitro studies and the results are promising. In Malaysia, in the 1960s, 73 per cent of its total land area (24 million hectares) was forested. By the 1990s, it had already dropped to 58 per cent (19 million ha).* *figures from the New Sunday Times, Malaysia