Rehabilitation of degraded forest areas is not a new thing for Malaysia in which forest replanting activities had been carried out in a faster pace all over the country in order to curtail the product demand from natural forests as well to nurture degraded forest areas. However, there are many doubts concerning how we evaluate the degree of successful rehabilitation activities in restoring soil fertility. The objective of this study is to provide fundamental information of the physico-chemical properties and clay mineral composition between natural, secondary and rehabilitated forests. Soil profiles were made at each natural and planted Shorea leprosula plots of Chikus Forest Reserve and another three at secondary and enrichment planting (high and low elevation) of Tapah Hill Forest Reserve, Perak. Results indicate that there is improvement on selected soil physico-chemical properties especially soil compactness, basic cations and other nutrients at rehabilitated forests in comparison with natural forests. Enrichment planting showed higher nutrients content compared to monoculture planted Shorea leprosula plot which proved that mix planting of species provides a wide range of substrate excretion via roots, and serve as a medium for soil microbial activities to synthesis and in circulating nutrients. Longer period of planting should be considered as part of soil fertility evaluation because it also influences the soil restoration process. In conclusion, forest rehabilitation activities helps in restoring and increasing the degraded forests’ soil fertility gradually by which longer period of time after planting gave better soil fertility results. Nevertheless, mix trees species planting was found to be better than mono trees species planting as it provides abundance and diversity of forest litter and substrate for soil microbial activities.

 Keywords: Natural forest, secondary forest, rehabilitated forest, soil fertility