Protect Sabah’s natural forests: WWF-Malaysia

Published on: Monday, March 23, 2020

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Sg Luis view from a helicopter.

Kota Kinabalu:
Natural forest is declining all over the world, threatened by unsustainable development and tragedies like fire, according to the WorldWide Fund for Nature-Malaysia (WWF-Malaysia).“We cannot afford to lose more. In Sabah, our forests are our treasures; inside or outside of parks and protected areas. Our forests are Mother Nature’s gift that keep on giving. The least we could do is to keep them alive,” said WWF-Malaysia in a statement, here, Thursday.
WWF-Malaysia explained that the forested area in the south of Sabah are mostly commercial forests that are part of the Sustainable Forest Management License Agreement (SFMLA) governed by the Sabah Forestry Department.

The license holders are companies who enter an agreement with the SFD to manage a commercial forest in a sustainable manner. One example is Forest Management Unit (FMU) no. 7, better known as Sabah Forestry Industry (SFI). It is located at the west bordering both Sarawak and Kalimantan.
Towards the east coast are other FMUs, named FMU 8, 13 and 25. Limited studies have been conducted in these areas, probably due to inaccessibility since the cessation of logging activities by the late 90s and early 2000s.
In the interest of biodiversity and securing key transboundary habitat areas, WWF-Malaysia and WWF Indonesia have conducted preliminary survey on wildlife, particularly transboundary elephant surveys along the international boundaries beginning in 2007.
The preliminary surveys between 2007 and 2012 and focused surveys in 2014-2016 proved that elephants travel along rivers and valleys especially at Agison and Sibuga within FMU 25 to move across the Sabah-Kalimantan boundary.
In 2016, WWF-Malaysia conducted aerial orangutan nest count in FMU 25, which concluded that there are about 361 orangutans concentrated at the far-eastern part of FMU 25.
WWF- Malaysia’s field team were heli-dropped and the teams camped for a week in FMU 25 to conduct wildlife survey by foot and deployed camera traps in 2017/2018.
During the survey, the presence of iconic and protected species such as the Sunda clouded leopard, banteng, Malayan sun bear and Bulwer’s pheasant were captured by camera-traps.
As expected, there is an abundance of bearded pigs, yellow muntjacs, pig-tailed macaques and greater mouse-deers. Unfortunately, the area is also prone to encroachment by illegal gaharu collectors, personally encountered by the field team.

In October 2018, another research team landed by helicopter in FMU 25. The expedition consisted of expert teams from the Sabah Forest Research Centre who carried out botanical and entomology surveys.
The teams found a significant diversity of commercial dipterocarp tree species as well as heath forest tree species. Pitcher plants, rhododendrons and forest mushrooms were also found to be abundant.
Other interesting finds were the pelian fish, softshell turtle, Microhyla (a tiny frog), Giant Mottled Eel, papilionid butterflies and Jungle Jade butterflies.
The most magnificent view from this expedition is the discovery of beautiful waterfalls of Sg Luis and Sg Mengilan. The area has a high potential for eco-tourism, provided there are sufficient investment and sustainable planning.
Even with only preliminary research done so far, it is undeniable that this remote area far to the south is rich in biodiversity and ecosystem services.
“It is important for Sabah to maintain these features so we would not lose another iconic species after the Sumatran rhino,” said WWF-Malaysia.
It stated that FMU 25 is also a large water catchment area which will be extremely important to support future booming towns between Keningau and Tawau as well as over the border- where a future expansion of population in Kalimantan is projected.
With pressing development needs, there is a need to make sure that each option is considered carefully. For example, forestry is no longer an exclusively extractive industry. Carbon is now officially a forest product, and ecotourism might one day replace logging in high-biodiversity areas. This means that safeguarding the forest is also a form of business, and one that makes perfect ecological sense.
“We have learnt from the past that recovering a lost forest is next to impossible. Treatment of damages and re-establishing wildlife habitat is an expensive affair.
“Today, logging in Sabah should strictly be carried out by Reduced Impact Logging methods which are costlier than other conventional methods, but an important investment to safeguard wildlife and water resources and secure timber supplies into the future.
“In the case of FMU 25, it would be in the State and the people’s best interest to maintain our natural forest cover for plant biodiversity, wildlife habitat, future water supply and halting climate change,” it said.
This does not mean that there is no room for development. However, proper development planning should include a High Conservation Value (HCV) Assessment which will guide the developer on conservation management. HCV is a biological, ecological, social or cultural value of outstanding significance.
Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures, a similar concept introduced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is also applicable when identifying and managing precious natural resources that need to be conserved in a development landscape.