FRIM promotes sustainable management and optimal use of forest resources in Malaysia by generating knowledge and technology through research, development and application in tropical forestry.

The site comprised an area that was practically stripped of its original forest cover except for a few remnant trees at the more inaccessible localities.

Lalang-grass scrub on the hillsides made way to vegetable terraces on the lower slopes, while the valley cradled a few ponds, the left-overs of a past tin-mining operation.

The plantations covered 154 hectares just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, and before the Japanese occupation of the Malay Peninsula in 1941–1945.

By this time the dipterocarp and non-Dipterocarp arboreta contained 75 species (represented by 360 individual trees), while the Herbarium collection numbered nearly 40,000 accessions.

Just before Malaysia won independence from the British Empire in 1957, some 220 hectares of plantations had been established at the institute, while the Dipterocarp and non-Dipterocarp arboreta held 201 and 168 species respectively.