FOSTER poised for next phase of growth with new committee
KOTA KINABALU: Friends Of Sea Turtles Education and Research (FOSTER) is poised for the next phase of growth after electing its new executive committee for 2018-2020 during its annual general meeting recently.
They are president: Alexander Yee, vice president: Dares S.A @ Octavius, teasurer: Elsie Gidai, secretary: Michael Lo, deputy secretary: Haslin Gaffor, Committee: Kenny Teng, Noor Hafizah Zubaidi, and advisors: Dr James Alin and Rr Juanita Joseph.
After the election, Yee who is managing director of Trekkers Lodge Sdn Bhd, expressed his appreciation for the commitment of the new exco members.
He noted that the new team has a good balance consisting of media journalist, tourism players, finance institution executives and academics. Moreover, the age group varies and allows for longterm continuality.
The new exco members later formulated the action plans for the next 12 months.
The plans include the continuation of the community beach cleaning on Libaran island, expanding the beach cleaning to west coast of Sabah, the production of a booklet on Sea Turtle Volunteer Program on Libaran Island and more collaboration with related government agencies such as the Sabah Wildlife Department and Sabah Parks towards the conservation and protection of sea turtles.
Yee will also be leading the new team to make courtesy visits to various government agencies in due course.
In 2013, Trekkers Lodge signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Sabah Wildlife Department to set up a turtle conservation program on Libaran island, Sandakan.
The program includes creating awareness for the locals and visitors on the conservation value of sea turtles, undertaking research projects with the goal of better understanding the life cycle of sea turtles surrounding the Libaran island area and to make available research programmes on sea turtle for international and local students.
Yee duly set up FOSTER to better facilitate achieving the above objectives.
Since 2013, FOSTER has sponsored 12 local villagers to undergo an honorary wildlife warden course and subsequently provided employment to them to take care of the turtle hatchery, Taman Hadiah on Libaran island.
Turtle landings on the island have seen a marked increase and since the signing of the MOU in July 2013, FOSTER has released 30,000 baby turtles back into the ocean as of 1st March 2018.
Since 2015, FOSTER has also been working together with the villagers on Libaran island to clean up the Libaran shoreline on a daily basis. A clean shoreline has been one of the reasons for the increase in sea turtle landings on the island.