Protected area management priorities crucial for future of BorneanElephants

KOTA KINABALU: Degraded forests play a crucial role in the future survival of Bornean elephants.

A new study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, finds that forests of surprisingly short stature are ideal for elephants.

“Our study indicates that forests with a mean canopy height of 13 m were those most utilized by Bornean elephants. These forests are consistent with degraded landscapes or those recovering from previous logging, or clearance,” noted lead author Luke Evans, a postdoctoral researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and Danau Girang Field Centre.

“The study utilized GPS tracking data from 29 individual elephants that were collared across Sabah, providing high resolution, multi-year data,” said Evans.

The study paired the GPS tracking data for each elephant with airborne laser-based images of Sabah’s forests, providing high resolution three-dimensional maps of forest canopy height and structure.

Co-author Greg Asner, of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, and Carnegie Institution for Science explained “Our mapping of Sabah’s forests is unique in that it provides accurate and detailed spatial information on forest structure. Combined with the GPS telemetry data for the elephants, the connection between relatively low-statured tree canopies and elephant habitat emerged in a way that was previously unknown.

“The danger is that a large proportion of these lower-stature forest habitats could be prime candidates for conversion to large-scale agriculture before their importance is fully realized,” stated co-author Benoit Goossens, of Danau Girang Field Centre, Cardiff University and advisor for Sabah Wildlife Department.

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Two rescued BorneanSunBear s go back to the wild at TabinWildlifeReserve

SANDAKAN: Two rescued Malayan sun bears were released at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve, near Lahad Datu on March 7 by a team from the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC).

The adult female sun bears, given the names of Damai and Debbie, were originally surrendered by their owners who kept them as pets, to the Sabah Wildlife Department.

When the status of Malayan sun bear was upgraded to totally protected species in 1997, several people who kept sun bears as pets were allowed to retain the sun bears for a few years after the upgrade until the Sabah Wildlife Department was ready to take them.

Over the past few years, the surrendered sun bears have been rehabilitated back into the forest at BSBCC, learning important skills like climbing, digging and finding food. They have adapted so well that they were chosen out of the 44 bears at the centre, as the first release for 2018.

Both bears were fitted with GPS satellite collars which will enable the BSBCC to monitor their movements on a regular basis.

On March 6, a final medical check-up was conducted by Dr. Nabila Sarkawi. Then, at 3 am on March 7, under the cool cloak of darkness, four vehicles left Sepilok with their important cargo for the helipad at Tabin Wildlife Reserve Headquarters.

The cages were then airlifted by helicopter using cargo net high above the treetops to the chosen release location at the mud volcano site in the middle of the reserve.

The project was a joint effort between Sabah Wildlife Department, Sabah Forestry Department, and the BSBCC team.

Dr. Wong Siew Te, chief executive director and founder of BSBCC, said a great deal of planning had gone into the release and the effort had been very successful.

Continue reading at: Two rescued sun bears go back to the wild at Tabin Wildlife Reserve

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TheWildlifeDiaries: Looking for the wild cats of Borneo in Deramakot @WildDiaries

Riding through the night in the back of a beat up 4WD truck converted into a makeshift safari vehicle, we are perfectly exposed to the tropical downpour that hasn’t let up for the past two hours. Soaked to the skin, we sway with the truck as it slides in the mud and thunders through the crater-like wheel ruts cut into the main road of Borneo’s Deramakot Forest Reserve.

Eventually, the rain eases off just in time for us to spot the first mammal of the night – a Colugo – one of Borneo’s gliding mammals and one of its strangest. Also known as a Flying lemur, Colugo doesn’t actually fly, nor is it a lemur. But it is an excellent glider, equipped with flaps of extra skin that extend from its face all the way to its tail. 

It labours onto a branch about 40 meters above the forest floor and as it hangs upside down above us, a small face pokes out of the folds of its gliding membrane. It is a young Colugo, clinging to its mother’s belly and surveying the dark jungle around it.

“They are so weird”, muses Duncan, one of my companions in the car. “Said a bunch of people who went for a drive in the rainstorm” quips Pieter, his husband. “And paid for it!” pitches in Steve, the fourth member of the team, and we lose ourselves in a fit of laughter. 

In search of the wild cats of Borneo

This is the third night of our 10-day mammal-watching trip in Deramakot Forest Reserve in the Malaysian state of Sabah in Borneo and so far, it has rained every day and every night. But we are a team on a mission. We are here to see the elusive wild cats of Borneo, particularly the Clouded leopard – a cat so rarely seen that not much is known about its life in the wild.

Led by Mike from Adventure Alternative Borneo, we ‘go nocturnal’ to match the leopard’s activity pattern: up for most of the night, asleep for most of the day.

Mike has been organizing mammal watching tours in Deramakot for three years and in that time, he has probably seen more Clouded leopards than anyone else in the world. The sightings are not frequent – one or two a month; sometimes two in one night and other times none in more than a month, yet this is the highest success rate of anywhere else on earth.

It is counter-intuitive that a logged forest would be the best place in the world to see a rare feline. Yet in Deramakot, the Sabah Forestry Department seems to have attained the perfect balance between sustainable logging and wildlife conservation – an achievement recognized by the international Forest Stewardship Council. An impressive 75% of mammals in Sabah are found in this 55,507-hectare reserve, including all five species of wild cats of Borneo.

Continue reading (Incl. Pics & Vids) at: TheWildlifeDiaries: Looking for the wild cats of Borneo in Deramakot

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30,000th baby turtle released from LibaranIsland

SANDAKAN: The Executive Committee of FOSTER (Friends Of Sea Turtles Education & Research) together with 40 student from SK Libaran successfully released the 30,000th baby turtle from Libaran Island yesterday.

The students later verbally pledged they would help protect the environment by not throwing rubbish around.

As part of a turtle conservation program made available through the subsequent signing of a 5-year duration Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Sabah Wildlife Department in July 2013, FOSTER was involved in the setting up of a turtle hatchery on Libaran island in 2012.

The program includes creating awareness for the locals and visitors on the conservation value of sea turtles, undertaking research projects with the goal of better understanding the life cycle of sea turtles surrounding the Libaran Island area and to make available research programs on sea turtle for international and local students.

Since January 1, 2013 till January 31, 2018, the turtle hatchery on Libaran has collected 22,786 Green Turtle eggs and 10,090 Hawksbill Turtle eggs (totaling 32,876). A baby turtle usually requires 45-65 days to hatch from an egg. Not all will survive the incubation period.

And on March 1, this year the hatchery celebrates the release of its 30,000th baby turtle from the shore of Libaran island.

“We have in fact started the hatchery program at the end of 2011 and have been releasing baby turtles since then. But for this special release, we started to calculate from the year we signed the MOU with the Sabah Wildlife Department,” said Alexander Yee, the president of FOSTER and the managing director of Walai Penyu Conservation Park.

Continue reading at: 30,000th baby turtle released from Libaran Island

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Scientists unlock secret of proboscismonkey

KOTA KINABALU: There is a secret to Sabah’s iconic male proboscis monkeys – when they become bigger, so will their body and testicles.

But more importantly, the males with a bigger nose can attract more females.

According to a scientific study, there is a clear link between the nose sizes of the males and the number of females in their harems.

The study was jointly carried out by scientists from the Sabah Wildlife Department, Danau Girang Field Centre, Cardiff University and Kyoto University.

Researcher Dr Ikki Matsuda from Chubu University and Kyoto University in Japan said exaggerated male traits, such as a large nose, could be great for attracting females.

During this study, morphological measurements and behavioural observations in free-ranging proboscis monkeys were carried out in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, Dr Ikki said in a statement.

They also recorded the vocalisations of male and female proboscis monkeys at three different zoos – the Yokohama Zoo in Japan, Singapore Zoo and Lok Kawi Zoo in Sabah.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: Scientists unlock secret of proboscis monkeys

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Sabah doing right thing for orangutan conservation

KOTA KINABALU: One hundred thousand orangutans have disappeared in the last 16 years in Borneo, a new study published last week in Current Biology, reveals.

Two Sabah-based co-authors, Dr Marc Ancrenaz, co-director of the NGO HUTAN and Dr Benoit Goossens, director of Danau Girang Field Centre and Reader at Cardiff University, took part in the study and they explain the significance of these results for Sabah and praise the government’s hard work to protect orangutans in the State.

“This figure is staggering and means a few things at the scale of Borneo, explained Ancrenaz.

“First of all, the rate of decline is much faster than what we thought, and this is worrying. If we cannot stop this decline, many more populations are going to disappear in the next few decades. It also means that there were more orangutans in the past than what we thought, and this illustrates how difficult it is to know exactly how many wild orangutans are surviving in Borneo. Counting these animals is indeed a very difficult task and most (if not all) estimates published in the past have been shown to be wrong, confirmed Ancrenaz.

He said the major reason explaining this decline is the killing that happens in non-protected and protected areas. Forest conversion for agriculture explains less than 50% of the decline. This also means that it is urgent to change our approach to conserve orangutans.

“What does that mean for Sabah, asked Goossens who said most large populations have been relatively stable for the past 20 years in the State thanks to the creation of new fully protected forests by the State government.

“The goal of the State Government to set aside 30% of its forests as totally protected areas will certainly increase the chance of survival of orangutans in Sabah, he explained after the Sabah Wildlife Department refuted and disagreed with a foreign media report that claimed over 6,000 orangutans have been killed in Sabah between 1999 and 2015.

However, Ancrenaz pointed out that severe habitat fragmentation and further land conversion could take a heavy toll on small orangutan populations. For example, data from HUTAN and Sabah Wildlife Department showed that the fragmented population of orangutans living in Lower Kinabatangan was about 1,100 in the early 2000’s. Today this population numbers less than 800 individuals.

“Hunting is not an issue in Lower Kinabatangan. This decline is explained by habitat loss and the fact that orangutans need a landscape with sufficient natural forest to survive.

“Many other small groups of animals that were isolated in the late 1990s-early 2000s because of oil palm conversion were not accounted for during the orangutan state survey of the early 2000s. Most of these small populations are now gone, he added.

Goossens said there are ways to improve the chance of long-term survival of this iconic species in Sabah.

Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Sabah doing right thing for orangutan conservation

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6,100 orangutan s killed? Rubbish, says Sabah Wildlife

It says the report was baseless because it was based on a research finding without hard facts and evidence produced by three scientists based in Sabah.

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) has rubbished a foreign media report claiming that 6,100 orangutans were killed in Sabah between 1999 and 2015.

Its director, Augustine Tuuga, in a statement here today, said the report was baseless because it was based on a research finding without hard facts and evidence produced by three scientists based in Sabah.

He said research findings published in the PLOS journal in 2004 estimated the orangutan population in Sabah at 11,000.

At the time of the study, 60% of the orangutan population in the state was believed to be outside of the protected areas.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: 6,100 orangutans killed? Rubbish, says Sabah Wildlife

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Sunda pangolin now totally protected in Sabah

SANDAKAN: The Sunda pangolin has been upgraded to a totally protected species in Sabah, and joins the ranks of the Orangutan, Sun Bear and several other iconic species found in the state.

Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun said this meant that it was forbidden to hunt, consume or sell pangolins or their parts and offenders could face the maximum penalty as provided for in the Sabah Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997.

“The document to upgrade the protection status of pangolins has been approved by the Sabah State Cabinet,” he said in a speech at the launch of a pangolin sculpture at the Sandakan Airport here today.

The text of his speech was read out by Assistant Minister Datuk Kamarlin Ombi, who launched the sculpture built from recycled polycarbonate advertising boards and used bottles.

Masidi said one of the biggest challenges in pangolin conservation was that very little was known about “this highly secretive and elusive creature”.

He said that for millions of years, pangolins have evolved and adapted to enable them to remain undetected and were often found in low densities based on camera trapping studies.

This made them rarely seen and particularly difficult to study, leading scientists to believe this species was in significant danger of extinction, he said.

Despite the existence of wildlife laws in different countries, poaching and illegal trafficking of wildlife species still persisted, he said.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: Sunda pangolin now totally protected in Sabah

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Michelle Yeoh returns to Sepilok nearly a decade later

SANDAKAN: Nearly a decade after filming The National Geographic documentary, “Among the Great Apes with Michelle Yeoh” the world famous Hollywood Superstar, Tan Sri Dato’ Michelle Yeoh paid a visit to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, Sandakan.

During her visit, Tan Sri Michelle was escorted by Dr Diana Ramirez, Acting Manager of Sabah Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Rescue Unit (WRU) and Sylvia Alsisto, Officer in Charge of Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre.

Despite the rain, the entourage continued the visit to the orangutan viewing at the feeding platform to witness the second phase of orangutan rehabilitation process at the Outdoor Nursery Complex, which was open to public in 2014.

Tan Sri Michelle’s last stop on her visit to Sepilok was the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre where she had a full briefing on sun bear conservation efforts by the CEO and founder, Dr. Wong Sew Tie.

“After nearly 10 years of volunteering while shooting the documentary (Among Great Apes with Michelle Yeoh) here in Sepilok, I am so delighted to see so many changes here in Sabah in terms of Wildlife conservation.

Sabah Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Rescue Unit and the gravely important work they do in rescuing and passionately taking care of Sabah’s endangered wildlife is an awe-inspiring experience that Malaysia should be proud of,” quipped Michelle.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: Michelle Yeoh returns to Sepilok nearly a decade later

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The key to Borneo pygmy elephants' survival

KOTA KINABALU: A BETTER understanding of the origins of the Borneo pygmy elephants in Sabah is vital for their survival.

Danau Girang Field Centre researcher Benoit Goossens said understanding the pygmy elephants’ origins and past demography would be useful for the development of a long-term conservation strategy.

He said the centre, together with the Sabah Wildlife Department and other partners, was drafting a 10-year action plan to protect the elephants.

He said there were fewer than 2,000 pygmy elephants living in an increasingly fragmented environment. With regular news of poisoned or dead Bornean elephants, the future is grim for the endangered species.

A recent study by a joint research team, published in Scientific Reports, revealed that the elephants may have arrived on Borneo island at a time of the last land bridge between the Sunda Islands in Southeast Asia.

The research team was led by Lounes Chikhi from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia (IGC, Portugal) and CNRS, Université Paul Sabatier (France), Cardiff University (Wales), Sabah Wildlife Department and Goossens.

“Until recently, there are two opposing theories on the origin of Bornean elephants: they could have been introduced by humans, maybe 300 years ago, or they could have diverged from Asian elephants a long time ago.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: The key to Borneo pygmy elephants' survival

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Sabah still strives to ensure sumatran rhinos’ survival

KOTA KINABALU: Efforts to ensure the survival of the Sumatran rhinoceros, especially in Sabah, have not ceased, says state tourism, culture and environment minister Datuk Masidi Manjun.

He admitted that with the poor health of Iman, the only female rhino in captivity, efforts had become more difficult.

“Considering that she (Iman) is the only one left, to me, that is even more difficult (to save Sumatran rhinos from extinction).

“You know, when you only have one left, sometimes you have to think twice before engaging in a treatment that has not been proven yet,” he said when met by reporters after opening the Camaca Gelato Concept Cafe here yesterday.

Masidi said there had been a lot of suggestions and theories on how to treat Iman, but so far, none were successful.

Nevertheless, he was pleased the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), through its cooperation with various bodies, continued to work hard to ensure the survival of the rhino species.

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Captive breeding in wildlife conservation unpopular - Sabah Wildlife

KOTA KINABALU:  Assisted reproduction and captive breeding methods are not fashionable in wildlife conservation circles either in Sabah or globally, said Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) director Augustine Tuuga.

Tuuga was commenting on two wildlife experts based in Sabah in a recent article of Malay Mail Online published on December 21.

In the article, the experts expressed fears over the status of endangered wildlife species including the Sumatran rhino, banteng, elephant, sun bear, orangutan and pangolin.

“We thank them for their supportive comments and would like to expand on two of the methods that they noted, namely assisted reproduction and captive breeding. These methods are currently not fashionable in wildlife conservation circles either here or globally,” he said in a statement.

“But rare wildlife species will keep on going extinct if we do not grasp the realities and think of new and supportive means to save them.

“One important point is that setting aside protected areas is absolutely necessary, but this is never going to be enough, anywhere in the world, to save every species from eventual extinction.

“The best lands are taken up by the human population, and it is the large animals that are the most at risk.

“Another point is that many wildlife species are actually quite adaptable in terms of their habitat requirements, and we need to make some profound mental adjustments if we are to plan for the future.

“If we had 20 fertile Sumatran rhinos and 20 fertile Bornean banteng available, I would be happy to set up a joint venture with a big oil palm plantation and let the animals live and breed under the oil palms, where they could get most of their food by eating weeds.

“A third and critical point is that when a species gets down to very low numbers, the concern should not only be with reducing deaths but, more importantly, increasing birth rate,” he explained.

He said that in the Sumatran rhino case, poaching had ceased to be the main problem and after the 1960s, the main problem was insufficient births, instead.

Tuuga explained that the Sumatran rhino case also showed that about 80% of more than 20 female rhinos captured in Indonesia and Malaysia since the 1980s had significant reproductive pathology which prevented them from being able to bear a foetus.

Continue reading at: Captive breeding in wildlife conservation unpopular - Sabah Wildlife

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Bornean Banteng Action Plan proposed for Sabah

KOTA KINABALU: The final chapter of Yayasan Sime Darby’s research conservation projects with the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) and the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) will begin with a two-day workshop attended by subject matter experts aimed at conserving the Bornean banteng.

International and local scientists, governmental agencies as well as industry players will convene until  December 1 to save the iconic and endemic species to Sabah, months after proposing recommendations towards the conservation of two other species – the proboscis monkey and Sunda clouded leopard.

Recommendations will be proposed to protect the Bornean banteng based on findings of a five-year extensive state-wide survey conducted by DGFC and SWD.

A Bornean Banteng Action Plan for Sabah will then be drafted based on the proposed recommendations gleaned from the workshop. It will be validated by the IUCN Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group before being submitted to the State Government for approval.

DGFC director Dr Benoit Goossens said he hoped that the Sabah state government will adopt the Bornean Banteng Action Plan for implementation to save the species, which is threatened by heavy poaching, habitat loss, road development and forest fragmentation in Sabah.

Last month, three bantengs were poached by hunters in three protected areas in Sabah in the space of three days.

“At that rate of poaching, the species will not survive another 20 years and we will lose it like we lost our Sumatran rhinoceros,?he said.

“During this project, DGFC, in collaboration with SWD and Sabah Forestry Department, carried out surveys using camera traps in several protected and unprotected areas throughout the state.

“We currently have four, maybe five isolated populations of banteng, one on the west coast, one or two in central Sabah, one in the south-east and one in the north-east of Sabah. The total population is estimated to be around 400 to 500 individuals, making the Bornean banteng the most endangered large mammal in Sabah?", added Goossens.

Continue reading at: Bornean Banteng Action Plan proposed for Sabah

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Rare Bornean clouded leopards caught on camera

A Bornean clouded leopard and her two cubs were captured on camera strolling through a Malaysian forest reserve last week, a rare daytime sighting of the elusive animals in the wild.

Found only on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, the big cat species is known to zoologists as Neofelis diardi, with just 700 estimated to live in a habitat shrunk by poaching and deforestation.

“Seeing it in daytime is nearly unheard of, and never with its young,” said Michael Gordon, who filmed the animals cross a road and walk into bush in Deramakot in Sabah on the island of Borneo, where camera traps first spotted the cats in 2010.

“The Sunda clouded leopard is difficult across most of its range, but the last 3 years I have been coming to Deramakot, I have seen it a quite a few times,” the photographer told Reuters, using an alternative name for the species.

The animal’s habitat has shrunk by a tenth each year over the last two decades, the World Wildlife Fund said, hit by poaching and deforestation for commercial purposes.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: Rare Bornean clouded leopards caught on camera

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Less than 800 Sunda clouded leopards in Sabah

KOTA KINABALU: Hunting activities and habitat destruction are reducing the number of the Sunda clouded leopards in Sabah to about 750.

A recent study published in the scientific journal, Oryx, has produced the first robust estimate of the number of Sunda clouded leopards remaining in Sabah where changes to the state’s forest landscape are believed to be affecting these threatened wild cats.

The study, led by researchers WildCRU (University of Oxford, UK), in collaboration with partners from the Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), Sabah Wildlife Department and Panthera, provided the first evidence that the population density of the Sunda clouded leopard is ‘negatively affected’ by hunting pressure and forest fragmentation.

It also showed that the time period since logging among selectively logged forests is positively associated with abundance.

This research was primarily funded by the Darwin Initiative, the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation, the Robertson Foundation and the Sime Darby Foundation.

“For six years, we conducted intensive camera-trap surveys of eight protected areas in Sabah,” said Dr Andrew Hearn from WildCRU, first author of the paper. “We used the cloud shaped markings on the coat of the animal and morphology to identify age and sex of individual animals and used sophisticated statistical methods to estimate their density in these different forest areas across Sabah.

“We also analysed our camera trap data to provide an estimate of poaching pressure for each study area,” added Hearn. “We found evidence of poaching activity in all forest areas with the lowest detection rates being in Danum and the highest in Kinabatangan. We finally estimated the size of the population of the Sunda clouded leopard to be around 750 individuals in Sabah.”

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Borneo Wildlife Warriors - Film featuring Sabah’s wildlife and rescues showing Sept 16

KOTA KINABALU: Borneo Wildlife Warriors, a six weekly episodes of a film production featuring sun bears, elephants, orangutans and others, on breath-taking rescues and relocations in the state will be released starting from September 16.

This will be the second season after the completion of its first 10-episode film production, ‘Borneo Jungle Diaries’. The episodes can be watched online at scubazoo.tv.

Scubazoo TV is a new online wildlife channel by Asia’s leading natural history filming and photography company, Scubazoo.

Its managing director, Jason Isley, said these episodes will be investigating the threats posed by afforestation, the illegal pet trade and more with Sabah’s Wildlife Rescue Unit (WRU) vets and rangers working to protect endangered wildlife.

“There are a few places that evoke the magic and mystery of Borneo: dense jungles packed with enigmatic animals, including orangutans, sun bears and the world’s smallest elephant.

However, Borneo’s rain forests – and all that inhabit there are facing colossal threats. Deforestation, illegal wildlife and pet trade and the traditional medicine trade are all threatening the survival of these unique animals,” he said.

Continue reading at: Borneo Wildlife Warriors - Film featuring Sabah’s wildlife and rescues showing Sept 16

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Forests outside of protected areas critical for orangutan

KOTA KINABALU: The Lower Kinabatangan has lost almost a third of its orangutan population in the last 16 years, following continued loss of forests outside of protected areas and further fragmentation of their habitat that is home to other wildlife, including the Borneo pygmy elephant and the proboscis monkey.

These forests outside protected areas – including privately owned and state lands – are largely composed of swamp areas that are increasingly becoming threatened in Borneo and which have poor or no economic value for oil palm due to daily or seasonal flooding events.

Long-term monitoring has revealed that the decline of orangutans has not stopped in the Lower Kinabatangan, despite this being identified as a high priority area for the primate in Sabah’s Orangutan Action Plan. It is critical to both address the future of these forests outside of protected areas and to recreate contiguous forest corridors.

The future is bleak for the Bornean orangutan, which last year moved to IUCN’s Critically Endangered category with numbers dropping from 4,000 individuals in the 1960s to 1,125 in 2001 to less than 800 today in the Lower Kinabatangan.

A study published this month in Scientific Reports indicates Sabah’s overall orangutan population has dropped by 20 per cent since the last comprehensive survey in the early 2000s, which had placed their number at 11,000 individuals.

Borneo Futures co-founder Dr Marc Ancrenaz said habitat fragmentation in Lower Kinabatangan remains a major issue with 11,000 hectares of forests outside protected areas lost in under a decade up to 2014, and over 20,000 hectares on alienated and state lands at risk of being converted for agriculture, primarily oil palm, further fragmenting the orangutan population and accelerating its decline.

Continue reading at: Forests outside of protected areas critical for orangutan

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Lok Kawi Wildlife Park must be relocated

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun supports the relocation of the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park as it will allow for better management and beneficial for everyone in the long run.

He said that the current location of the park in Lok Kawi was quite congested and not fully utilised due to its hilly terrain.

“If we are looking ahead, then we have to move to bigger and better forests. Wildlife shouldn’t be contained in small enclosures. It is difficult to see them in real natural habitat in small enclosures,” he told reporters at a Hari Raya Aildifitri celebration yesterday.

He was responding to the Sabah Wildlife Department’s proposal that the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park in Putatan be relocated to Sugud, Penampang.

Its director, Augustine Tuuga, said the department had held talks with Penampang district officials over the proposal and the relocation of the wildlife park was for the government to decide.

According to Augustine, the proposed site in Sugud is well-suited as the forest covers an area of about 1,618.7 hectares compared to Lok Kawi Wildlife Park’s size of 113.3 hectares.

Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Yahya Hussin however has objected to the proposal to shift the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park to Sugud. He claimed that it would be unwise to shift the wildlife park, or commonly referred to as a zoo, as it will cost a lot money and time consuming.

Masidi said the proposal to relocate the park started a few years ago.

“There are a lot of considerations, so it’s not just about whether we want to move, but if the villagers are willing to let go of the land to accommodate the park.

“Personally, I like to plan beyond my lifetime, for future generations. Then yes, I am of the opinion that we need to move,” he said.

Continue reading at: Lok Kawi Wildlife Park must be relocated

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Trusan Sugut Forest Forest reserve houses iconic wildlife

KOTA KINABALU: Environmen-talists are coming together to restore a mini forest reserve teeming with wildlife in Sabah’s interior.

The Trusan Sugut Forest Reserve (Trusan Sugut FR) in the state’s north-eastern part, which is home to 365 butterfly species, 57 types of amphibians, 103 reptile species, 335 bird varieties and 168 kinds of mammals, was recently elevated from a Class II to Class I (totally protected area) forest reserve.

However, The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia says there is still much to be done in terms of restoring the forest.

Its executive director and chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma said the 8,690ha forest reserve was severely degraded in many parts due to human activity.

He said natural regeneration took a long time and usually, the altered conditions did not suit the orang utan and other wildlife.

“We intend to lend nature a helping hand, and urge the public to support our fundraising efforts for Sabah’s wildlife haven,” he said in a statement.

The Trusan Sugut FR houses ico­nic wildlife such as the proboscis monkey, banteng, Bornean orang­utan and Sundaland clouded leo­pard, among others.

In terms of habitat, the forest reserve also boasts of various forest types including endangered ones such as lowland mixed dipterocarp forest, a variant of which is the kapur (limestone) forest, lowland kerangas (heath) forest, lowland peat swamp forest, and lowland freshwater swamp forest.

WWF-Malaysia senior programme officer for orangutan conservation Donna Simon said some parts of Trusan Sugut FR occupied by Bornean orangutan had become severely degraded due to past logging activities and fires.

“We are keen to help the Sabah Forestry Department restore the landscape with native and fast-growing tree species,” she said.

Continue reading (Incl. Pic) at: Trusan Sugut Forest Forest reserve houses iconic wildlife

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Action plan to protect clouded leopard in Sabah to start in 2018

KOTA KINABALU: A 10-year action plan to protect the Sunda clouded leopard is likely to be implemented in 2018.

According to Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) director Dr Benoit Goossens at the closing of a three-day workshop on how to protect the species yesterday, they will be preparing the draft skeleton on the action plan and will be submitting the final draft to the Sabah Wildlife Department which will then be presented to the State Government for endorsement.

“We are likely to launch it by 2018,” he said.

He added that their objective is to ensure the clouded leopard continued to exist in years to come and are preserved.

At the same time, he also hoped that the public would become more aware of the clouded leopard, which is presently the least known cat in the world.

He added that Sabah has five wild cats, one of which was the clouded leopard.

“It is the biggest cat in Borneo,” he said.

Benoit also said that it was imperative that Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) continued on with their enforcement activities as the cats were vulnerable to illegal hunters and poachers.

Among the recommendations made during the workshop were the study on the impact of domestic dogs and cats that were brought in by hunters to the jungle, on the clouded leopards.

Continue reading at: Action plan to protect clouded leopard in Sabah to start in 2018

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