PERSONAL interest in connectivity is the hidden first cause of the Heart of Borneo (HoB) initiative.
We have nailed that first active interest down to Dato' Dr Mikaail Kavanagh, former CEO of WWF-Malaysia, because he was recognised as such as a keynote speaker at the latest HoB conference.
"I have always been interested in connectivity," he told Daily Express.
So now we know this intensifying connectivity drive in Sabah originated from Kavanagh who thinks it's indispensable for the permanent future of wildlife.
"The idea is, say you have a 500ha national park and another 500ha national park and you put them together to make 1,000ha, you save much more genetical and biological diversity than if they were spread out into two.
"This is because you don't have the depth of mixing the pool and genes of a bigger area," explained Kavanagh who started young as a primatologist working in remote Sarawak.
Size matters: Kavanagh Borneo has the luck that Kavanagh landed his first job in Sarawak.
That was 1981 when WWF-Malaysia made him a junior conservation officer in Lanjak Entimau, for obvious reason – orangutan population, about 1,400 of them.
Well-rated as a man of ideas, his efforts quickly turned Lanjak-Entimau in southeast Sarawak into one of the State's largest wildlife sanctuaries, in 1983.
Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: The idea man behind Heart of Borneo
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