10-year plan for forest reserve

Forest reserve (example)

The Sabah Forestry Department will formulate a 10-year forest management plan for the Gunung Rara forest reserve, located on Sabah’s east coast.

In a statement to announce the department’s assuming the direct management of the 51,245ha reserve, the department said it was part of an effort to place the area under Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) based on the Natural Forest Management (NFM) regime.

The first meeting of the project’s management committee for the area, chaired by department director Datuk Sam Mannan, was held in Sandakan recently.

“The management committee of the Gunung Rara SFM project will be headed by the department’s deputy director (development) Fidelis Edwin Bajau, with Sabah Foundation as a key member in the committee.

“This area is also part of the larger 261,264ha of United Nations Development Programme-Global Environment Facility (UNDP-GEF) project on ‘Biodiversity Conservation in Multiple-Use Forest Landscapes in Sabah’, and is a crucial wildlife corridor of global significance linking the world-renowned Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin Conservation Areas.”

The department added that appropriate forest management practices would be drawn up for the area to create a connectivity which was crucial for the viability of the wildlife corridor at the landscape level.

Source : New Straits Times

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No timber concession to Pemaju Holdings: Forest Dept

Sabah Virgin Forest (example)

State Forestry Director Datuk Sam Mannan has firmly denied rumours that the State Government is preparing to give timber concession land to Permaju Holdings Sdn Bhd as reported in the Business Times on Monday.

He said that all the virgin forests in Sabah are protected areas and stressed the false report regarding the timber concession could bring great harm to Sabah's and Malaysia's conservation efforts. Mannan was commenting on the report claiming that Permaju Holdings Sdn Bhd, controlled by Tan Sri Chai Kin Kong, was close to securing some 80,937 hectares of timber concession land in Sabah and Sarawak. The report additionally noted that Yayasan Sabah has awarded the firm with bulk of the land near Keningau. Business Times highlighted that an announcement on the matter will be made by as early as this month. The potential concession is said would make Permaju the single largest land concession owner in the "Land Below the Wind". It said Permaju, at its peak, had some 129ha of state-given land concession in Sabah with some of the land has now been converted for development projects, while the rest has been surrendered to the state. According to the contract, Permaju was supposed to help clear the land, said to be a virgin jungle area, and then plant oil palm. The virgin jungle is said filled with valuable timber, and proceeds from timber will go directly to Permaju. The report also said any proceeds from the planned oil palm estate will be shared with Yayasan Sabah, where the gross proceeds from the timber is easily more than RM1 billion. However, Mannan has denied the report by adding that the whole story was a figment of someone's wild imagination.

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Fujitsu helps regenerate rainforest in Sabah

Borneo Rainforest

 SHAH ALAM:  Japanese technology firm Fujitsu have planted 1,000 trees at the Eco-Forest Park at Kinarut, Sabah, this year with the help of other groups in an effort to regenerate the tropical rainforest in Borneo.

Individuals from Fujitsu Group as well as the  Japanese embassy,  Kinabalu Japanese School, Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Sabah Forestry Development Authority planted the saplings from Nov 23-Dec 2.

Fujitsu Malaysia marketing director Michele Lum said the forest regeneration project focuses on replanting a specific indigenous rainforest species known as the Dipterocarp, which grows slowly but is being cut down rapidly for the manufacture of plywood.

Since 2002, Fujitsu has planted 37,500 Dipterocarp saplings at the 150-hectare Eco-Forest Park with the assistance of Sabah Forestry Development Authority and the Japan International Forestry Promotion and Corporation Center.

“The survival rate of nursery trees we planted is 48% as of June 2012. Our continual efforts can increase the survival rate by planting new seedings in the areas where trees have died,” said Lum.

She said the  project is part of Fujitsu’s long term corporate social responsibility commitment in Malaysia to preserve the environment and its rich biodiversity.

Lum added that Fujitsu has also started surveying the wildlife in the area periodically to assess the degree of biodiversity in the Eco-Forest Park as it regenerates.

The Sabah Forestry Development Authority is attempting to revitalise the rainforest with tree-planting technologies and technical support provided by the Japan International Forestry Promotion and Corporation Centre.

Source: Selangor Times

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Sabah forest management gets acknowledgement

Galante and Emban at the photographic exhibition in Kota Kinabalu

Sabah's forest management practices are getting international acknowledgement with a Scottish university researcher saying that it is making a difference in efforts to minimize climate change.

Michael V. Galante, a PhD student of Edinburgh University said his thesis research showed that Sabah was “leading the chart” in sustainable forests management. He found that the Sabah government was doing great in its forests management, pro-active policy management and was a recommended place if people want to have a clean and great environment to work in. His research was on climate change mitigation through reduced-impact logging and he has been in Sabah for over 10 years. Galante said the impact of logging in the state had taken a charge on the environment with an increase in carbon monoxide. Fortunately, the environment was restored to a balance through the strict state government and the forestry department policies. The environment is protected by introducing the forest certification, guidelines on reduced-impact logging and having sustainable forest management. Meanwhile, Datuk Michael Emban, permanent secretary of Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry said about 60% of land in Sabah was protected. This showed how sincere the state government was in forest and environment conservation, he added.

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Orang utan population up by 20% in Sabah’s protected forests

KOTA KINABALU: Orang utan population within totally protected areas has increased by over 20 percent in Sabah's lower Kinabatangan since the first census was done seven years ago.

The number of orang utans orang-utans living within totally protected areas (TPA) increased from 38 percent to 60 percent, an orang utan conservationist Dr. Marc Ancrenaz said.

Dr Ancrenaz, who is co-director of the HUTAN Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Programme (HUTAN-KOCP), said the increasing population reflected a commitment by all, especially the state government, to protect more forest areas.

However, he did not disclose the number of orang utans within the totally protected forest areas.

The Sabah Forestry Department had recently increased the areas deemed totally protected forest reserves to help further in the conservation of orang utans and other species such as the Borneo pygmy elephant, Sunda clouded leopard, Sunbear, and hornbills and others.

“The recent areas regazetted as Class I (totally protected forest reserve) are lowland forests which are favoured for agriculture development. But the state government has shown that they value the environmental security in the long term by making them TPAs instead of going for short term profits,” Dr Ancrenaz, a wildlife veterinarian who has been working on wildlife issues in Sabah since 1998.

However, the biggest issue for orang-utan conservation in Sabah remains the problem of isolation and fragmentation of protected forests, primotologist Dr. Isabelle Lackman, who is a co-director HUTAN KOCP said in a statement.

“While the Kinabatangan has been protected by the Sabah Wildlife Department since gazetting in 2005, the Sanctuary is very broken up with some protected forests being totally isolated and this is not healthy for the long term survival of orang utan in the area,” Lackman explained.

“Our studies have shown that we need to reconnect patches of forest to ensure that we have a viable orang utan population for the future and this can be achieved by reconnecting these forest either by having patches of forest that orang utans can travel through or a contiguous corridor of forest,” Lackman added.

She felt that all planned and future conversion of even small forest patches needs to be stopped to ensure the viability of the long-term survival of the orang utan population in the lower Kinabatangan. 

Source: The Star

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Yayasan, Forestry identifying future forest protection areas

Kota Kinabalu: Yayasan Sabah and the Forestry Department will continue to identify "new" areas for legislative protection against future logging, alienation or development, in addition to those already gazetted. 

This is part of the intergenerational contract that both organistions adhere to. 

Yayasan Sabah (YS), to date, has about one million hectares under its management (excluding alienated lands) mainly under Forest Reserves. 

As of today, the totally protected areas (TPAS) within its management area cover over 420,000 hectares or 40 per cent of its concession. 

These include the crown jewels such as Imbak Canyon, Danum Valley and Maliau Basin. For added security, the State Government has also gazetted approximately 300,000ha of "Buffer Zone Forests" in the last six months, near or surrounding the three-core conservation zones. 

All in all, nearly 600,000ha of the existing and past management area, are under TPAs. 

They include both pristine and logged-over forests of high biological diversity, which arguably are the richest eco-zones on the entire island of Borneo. 

It is also apt to note that Yayasan Sabah, had in the recent past, handed back vast tracts of lowland forests to the State Government for wildlife conservation such as Tabin Wildlife Reserve and Mount Hatton Forest Reserve of 120,000ha and Kulamba Wildlife Reserve of 21,000ha, Environmental Protection such as Gunung Tinkar Forest Reserve of 10,150ha, Nurod-Urod (1,700ha) and Silabukan Forest Reserve (11,000ha) and the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified Tangkulap Forest Reserve (27,258ha) in the upper Kinabatangan. 

Not only are these areas protected by legislation, they are also managed on the ground through a wide stakeholder network involving the NGOs, environmental philanthropists and research organisations, to name a few. 

"We are of the opinion that Yayasan Sabah is the leading concessionaire in the country in the establishment of totally protected areas, within its jurisdiction and in varied conservation endeavours," it said. 

The Forestry Department also expressed its gratitude to Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman and his Cabinet colleagues for providing the much-needed leadership that has allowed the "TPA" policy to progress further. 

Source: Daily Express

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Most of Bornean orang-utans live outside protected areas

KOTA KINABALU: A recent study published in the scientific journal PLoS One by researchers working in Malaysia and Indonesia shows that about 80 per cent of the Bornean orang-utans live outside protected areas.

Using data collected over 21 years by 24 different teams from Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan the paper provides an overview of the orang-utan situation for Borneo as a whole.

“This analysis shows that the vast majority of orang-utan populations are found outside of the network of protected forests in Borneo,” said Dr  Serge Wich, the lead author of this article entitled “Understanding the Impacts of Land-Use Policies on a Threatened Species: Is There a Future for the Bornean Orang-utan?”

“Protected forests remain essential for conserving orang-utan in Borneo but most of these protected forests are found in highlands and in mountains and not in the lowland forests that are the favourite habitat of the orang-utans. The lowlands are also the prime areas selected for timber extraction and later further developed for agriculture such as oil palm,” stated Wich.

“In Sabah, the recent gazettement under Class I Virgin Jungle Forest Reserves of the lowland forests of Segama by the Sabah Forestry Department means that more than 60 per cent of the orang-utan population is now protected in Sabah. This is a huge improvement for orang-utan conservation in the State compared to the early 2000’s when only 30 per cent of the orang-utans in Sabah were living in protected forests,” said Dr Marc Ancrenaz, co-director of HUTAN and one of the leading authors of the paper.

With the biggest percentage of orang-utans being found in timber concession areas, the researchers emphasise the importance of good management in such concessions.

“These results also show that good logging practices in commercial forests exploited for timber is key for orang-utan survival. The fact that in Sabah, the Forestry Department has declared that all timber concession areas should be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) by the end of 2014 is good news for orang-utans,¡± added Ancrenaz.  Since November 2011, Sabah has five of Malaysia’s six timber concession areas under FSC certification, which includes reduced-impact logging and enforces a zero killing policy.

According to Ancrenaz, FSC certified forest provides economic benefit to land owners while ensuring the survival of wildlife such as the orang-utan.

Meanwhile for Borneo as a whole, the expansion of industrial tree plantations, oil palm plantations and other types of forest conversion into remaining orang-utan habitat will lead to the extinction of thousands of orang-utans throughout populations areas within the island. Such expansion according to the authors of this study should be halted as it infringes laws on species protection.

At the closing ceremony of the recent Sabah Orang-utan Conservation Dialogue held in Kota Kinabalu, Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun proposed a moratorium for oil palm expansion within the lower Kinabatangan in order to save the orang-utan population there from extinction.

A similar proposal was done at the end of the Heart of Borneo conference to stop any new agricultural development within the boundaries of Heart of Borneo. The future lies on increased yield productivity, and not on further agriculture expansion.

Source: Borneo Post

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