Conservation groups laud M'sia state's green efforts
Play
A move by the government of Malaysian state of Sabah to expand protected forests by another 183,000 hectare is good news for wildlife conservation efforts, particularly those involving the orang utan.
The Forestry Department's move to re-gazette the heavily logged Class 2 Commercial Forests into Class 1 Protection Forest at Ulu Segama and northern part of Gunung Rara would serve to secure the habitat of Malaysia's largest orang utan population, said wildlife conservation group Hutan.
Hutan's Kinabatangan orang utan conservation programme scientific director Dr Marc Ancrenaz said the move would also protect the biological diversity of both areas.
“Hutan has been assisting in surveys and monitoring of orang utan in these areas for the past few years, so we are especially pleased to see this move by the state government,” he added.
Borneo Rhino Alliance director Junaidi Payne said the main merit of the plan was to make it more difficult for any government in the future to convert the lowland parts of these forest reserves for agricultural purposes.
He said there was a temptation to convert logged areas into agricultural use as these provided high yields.
Junaidi said that while such areas would spell the highest taxation potential to the state government on a per hectare per year basis, companies were not obliged to pay for the adverse impacts such as lower water quality, lost carbon or biodiversity.
Land, Empowerment, Animals, People founder Cynthia Ong said Sabah was becoming a leader in pushing the boundaries in management of natural ecosystem services both in the country and within the region.
She said the state was also gaining recognition for treating its forests as stores of water, carbon and biodiversity, rather than just as timber sources.
