Book on trees in special man-made forest

SANDAKAN: A book - “A Guide to the trees in Heritage Amenity Forest Reserve” - is now on sale.

The Heritage Amenity Forest Reserve (HQ) is nestled within Sandakan Nature City. It is gazetted in 2009, where the Sabah Forestry Department (SFD) Headquarters is located.

From a modest beginning, the area has now transformed to an ambience that is almost equivalent to that of a rainforest. The greening endeavour which has been put in, especially at the Taman Warisan or Heritage Park, behind the SFD Headquarters is the pride of the Chief Conservator of Forests, Datuk Sam Mannan, who has a lot to do with this effort.

Since 2011, with the addition of a narrow strip of land acquired from the Department of Irrigation and Drainage, the Heritage Park has increased in size.

Through several forest restoration programmes over the last 16 years, the Heritage Park can now boast a total of 41 dipterocarp taxa, a group of timber trees, of which 21 are endemic to Borneo and three are confined to Sabah.

Initiated by Mannan, this is the second edition of the publication (the first edition was published in 2010).

This book features the various trees that are planted in this special man-made forest that covers 190 tree taxa from 40 families and 115 genera of which 147 are native to Sabah.

Of these taxa, 30 are endemic or only confined to the island of Borneo and three species are endemic to Sabah.

In the book, the trees are arranged alphabetically according to their scientific family names which are colourcoded at the lower margin of each page and within the family, the genera and species are arranged alphabetically.

Each plant is accompanied by a botanical description (that attempts to give a layman understanding of the various parts of the plant), the ecology and distribution of the plant and also the uses, in some instances.

For the ease of users, colour photos are included to feature some of these plant characters such as the habit, bark, leaves. flowers and fruits.

The growing forest within this relatively small urban forest reserve of 10.33 hectares serves not only as a facility for the environmental education programme of the Department but a showcase of the commercial timber species that are slowly disappearing due to forest conversion.

This book was compiled by Mr John B. Sugau, Dr Joan T. Pereira and Ms Alviana Damit, with the layout and design by Monica Chang, which the Forestry Department is proud to showcase. It is available at RM50 per copy at the Forestry Department Headquarters in Sandakan (089-242500 or email: Monica.Chang@sabah.gov.my), and the Forest Research Centre in Sepilok.