Plantation timber in Sabah hit the 1 million cubic metre

KOTA KINABALU: Production of plantation timber in Sabah hit the 1 million cubic metre mark last year with a total production of 1,234,777.75 cubic metres, a first for the state, Sabah Forestry director Datuk Sam Mannan said today. He said total production from plantation timber had increased by 141 per cent since 2001 with Acacia mangium showing the most significant increase at 231 per cent, making it the major plantation species produced over the last 10 years."Last year, Acacia mangium accounted for 87 per cent of the total production of plantation timber, followed by Eucalyptus grandis at 11 per cent, Gmelina arborea at 1 per cent and others at 1 per cent.


"Utilisation of rubber wood however remains small despite the extensive land clearing of old rubber plantations for replanting of new rubber trees," he said in a statement here Sabah Forest Industries Sdn Bhd (SFI) accounted for 60 per cent of last year's production, making it Sabah's biggest plantation timber producer, followed by Sabah Forestry Development Authority (Safoda) at 16 per cent, Sabah Softwoods Bhd at 12 per cent and Benta Wawasan Sdn Bhd at 11 per cent, he said.In terms of production by land status, he said 58 per cent of plantation timber was produced from forest reserves, with alienated lands at 26 per cent and state lands at 16 per cent. Meanwhile, log production from natural forests was approximately 2.6 million cubic metres, higher than plantation timber, he said, adding the state's goal of making plantation timber the major source of raw materials for the timber industry can be achieved if the current trend continues.

60% of Sabah still under rainforest

Despite extensive landscape changes in the past, including the introduction of agriculture to reverse the overdependence on timber, some 60 percent of Sabah still remains under forest cover, state Forestry Department Director Datuk Sam Mannan said. The rate of deforestation between 1970 and 2010 was about 0.5 percent a year, with its height being between 1990 and 2000 during the oil palm cultivation boom, which unfortunately also saw a direct correlation between the number of Orang Utans being sent to the rehabilitation centre in Sepilok, he said.

"Fortunately, what is most important is the fact that we did not discard the forest reserve system that we inherited. If anything, we expanded it. "About four million hectares of Sabah remain under forest reserves, parks and wildlife sanctuaries," he said when briefing the Sultan of Brunei, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who visited the department's Rainforest Discovery Centre (RDC) in Sepilok, last Saturday.
Mannan said despite "acts of random madness of the past," rainforests have managed to recover, with biological assets largely intact, and no record of any species going extinct so far. "The closest to extinction is the Sabah Rhino which we are trying to save through captive breeding," he added.

He also said the RDC, launched in 2007, is developed to meet objective of creating awareness on conservation and the environment as well as to promote ecotourism and recreation, education and research and development. Mannan said the total development cost for the centre has exceeded RM25mil and approximately RM10mil spent under the 10th Malaysia Plan to further develop its facilities.