(MY) forest corridor for wildlife

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Tuesday May 23, 2006 - The Star

 

Creating a forest corridor

 

By growing tree seedlings for reforestation, youths in Kinabatangan,

Sabah, are assisting in orang utan conservation. MICHAEL CHEANG

reports.

 

WITH only about 55,000 orang utans surviving in Borneo today, and with

their population dropping by 30% to 50% over the past 30 years, things

are not looking good for one of Malaysia's most iconic species.

 

The biggest threat to the survival of these great apes, apart from

poaching and illegal pet trade, is the loss of habitat to logging and

plantations.

 

Gazetted under the Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 only last

October, parts of lower Kinabatangan (which includes the Kinabatangan

floodplain where many of Sabah's orang utans live) are degraded and

fragmented by development, logging and oil palm plantations.

 

Thus, patches of protected greens are surrounded by degraded forest

and plantations, which in turn affects the abundance of food,

distribution, behaviour and ecology of orang utans and other wildlife.

 

Under a project to green degraded Kinabatangan forests, conservation

group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 2003 started the Habitat

Restoration Project (Habitat) by setting up a tree nursery in Kampung

Bilit to grow seedlings for replanting.

 

It is part of its Corridor of Life effort, which aims to reforest both

sides of the Kinabatangan river and create a 'forest corridor' for

wildlife to move freely between isolated forest reserves, private

plantations and the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, as well as from

coastal mangrove swamps to upland forests.

 

Currently funded by tea producer BOH Plantations (which contributes

RM50,000 a year to Habitat and another RM50,000 to generate awareness

on orang utans), the project employs 10 local youths at RM26 a day as

field assistants.

 

Their tasks are collecting and germinating seeds at the 0.4ha nursery.

Field activities include planting seedlings, clearing climbers and

weeds, monitoring growths of planted trees and evaluating orang utans'

use of the area.

 

Programme assistant Joannie Jonitol said youths learn how to identify

food tree species, collect seeds and plant trees when they join. They

have planted over 15 tree species so far, all of which form the diet

of orang utans and are non-commercial trees. They include sengkuang,

tangkal, bongkol, durian, rambutan and mango trees.

 

" The orang utan is not the only animal that will benefit as other

animals also eat these fruits, " said Jonitol. " The reforestation also

allows animals to move from one patch of forest to another more

easily. "

 

The replanting effort currently concentrates on Lot 5 of the

Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. There are 10 lots that need to be

regenerated. As of December, over 10,200 seedlings have been

cultivated at the nursery and some 3,000 food trees planted in Lot 5,

chosen because it is close to Bilit.

 

Jonitol said the seedlings have a 50% mortality rate and are monitored

every three months. The biggest obstacle the project faces is one

beyond their control – floods. Kinabatangan is flood-prone and Lot 5

is especially susceptible, being located between two rivers.

 

" It floods very easily especially during the months of February and

March, " said Jonitol. " The floods can last a few weeks, and we can

only begin replanting again when the water subsides. "

 

Taking the floods into account, the project is trying to focus on

water-resistant plants that will survive floods better. Seedlings are

also at the mercy of wildlife that they are supposed to be helping.

 

" We cannot fence up the area because that would defeat the purpose of

the project. It will create a bottleneck that will hinder animals'

movement, " said Jonitol.

 

The owner of the land where the nursery is sited, Johari, said

villagers supported the project because it benefitted them, especially

youths who would otherwise have to seek jobs in the city.

 

" I was happy to let them use my family land because it is for a good

cause, " said the assistant supervisor of Bilit's homestay programme.

 

WWF also started a Home Cultivation Programme where villagers are

encouraged to start small-scale tree nurseries. Just like in the

project for local youths, they learn how to collect and germinate

seedlings, and later sell these for reforestation projects by oil palm

plantations.

 

" Besides generating additional income for villagers, the plantation

companies will have a ready supply of seedlings when they start their

reforestation programmes, " said Jonitol.

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Saving the orang utan's friends - The Star

 

By protecting the forest home of orang utans, we are also protecting

other critically endangered species such as the Sumatran rhino and

Borneo pygmy elephant.

 

Sabah is home to some of the less than 300 remaining Sumatran rhinos

in the world. These survive in very small and highly fragmented

populations, and Indonesia and Malaysia are their last significant

range states.

 

The smallest of all rhinos and the only two-horned rhino in Asia, the

Bornean subspecies of the Sumatran rhino is the most endangered of all

rhinoceros species in the world.

 

Sabah is also home to some 1,000 pygmy elephants. Identified as a

subspecies of Asian elephants only in 2003, they are smaller, chubbier

and more gentle-natured than other Asian elephants. They are found

only on the northeast tip of Borneo, mainly in Sabah.

 

A few of these elephants were collared with satellite tracking devices

last year, which confirmed that each elephant belongs to a herd of 30

to 50 individuals led by a mature matriarch, and often split off into

smaller groups for days or weeks at a time.

 

This tracking also revealed that the Borneo pygmy elephant is a

lowland animal – it lives only along river valleys and other low-lying

areas, except on occasions when the group has to travel over a hill to

reach another valley. Thus elephants must have lowlands to survive.

Their diet consists of at least 162 species of plants.

 

How You Can Help

 

 

Help us save the orang utan and other endangered animals by donating

just RM1 a day. Call River or Ruby at 03-78033772. All donations are

tax-deductible.

 

Purchase Kogiu and the Banana Tree (RM23 per copy) at WWF-Malaysia

(49, Jalan SS23/15, Taman Sea, 47400 Petaling Jaya). Proceeds from the

sale of this beautifully illustrated bi-lingual book will go to

WWF-Malaysia's conservation work in Sabah.