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.

Website to prevent illegal logging

In a bid to reduce illegal logging cases, Transparency International-Malaysia (TI-M) has come up with a user-friendly website for Malaysians to monitor rain forests and alert the authorities over suspicious activities. Its executive director Alan Kirupakaran said that the website would provide a platform for stakeholders to become efficient monitors and hoped it would become an effective measure to conserve forests in Malaysia.

“I believe with the co-operation of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC), using simple tools like the Google Earth Geospatial Technology (satellite, imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe) will allow the public to become active participants in protecting our forests,” he said at the workshop on forest adoption yesterday. He said since the website's creation in February, TI-M had received many public tip-offs regarding illegal logging activities and authorities had managed to investigate and expose six cases of illegal logging nationwide.

It was reported that Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Tan Sri Joseph Kurup told the Dewan Rakyat that the country had lost some RM10.7mil in revenue to such activities. Alan said TI-M would help monitor the website with relevant authorities as well as with ForestWatch's expert monitors from the Malaysia Forestry Department. The public can assess and report irregularities through its website.