ABOUT

Templer Park (Malay: Hutan Lipur Templer) is a forest reserve in Rawang, Gombak District, Selangor, Malaysia. It is 1,214 hectares in size and it was named in honour of Sir Gerald Templer, a British High Commissioner in Malaya. "On 8 September 1954, His Highness the Sultan of Selangor, the late Sultan Hishamuddin Alam Shah declared that Templer’s Park was 'dedicated by Selangor to serve as a refuge and a sanctuary for wildlife and a meeting-place for all who love and respect the beauty of nature'. The following year the government gazetted the area as “a Botanical Garden and Public Park” under the land enactment Templar Park is the type locality where the holotype of the Malaysian spine-jawed snake Xenophidion schaeferi was collected in 1988. To date this is the only known specimen of this rare snake, which belongs in the obscure and primitive snake family Xenophidiidae. The family contains only one other species, X. acanthognathus, also only known from its holotype, which was collected in Sabah, northeast Borneo. These snakes are harmless, nonvenomous, and thought to feed on earthworms or insect larvae..