Towards a better understanding between scientists and oil palm industry
KOTA KINABALU: “Is it better to share or not the land with wildlife in Sabah?”
This was one of the 20 questions debated by the scientific community active in the State during the First Sabah Scientific Community Forum co-organized by Sabah Wildlife Department, Danau Girang Field Centre, HUTAN, Project Seratu Aatai and WWF-Malaysia and funded by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council.
This forum, held in Kota Kinabalu on November 28 was officiated by Assafal P Alian, Assistant Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Sabah, and attended by about 50 national and international scientists working in Sabah.
A lot of scientific research is being undertaken in Sabah. It is often said that the state is home of one of the most wellstudied tropical forests in the world. However, disseminating these scientific results is a key process in order to inform land deciders, policy makers, industry players and society at large about what choices lay in front of us to reconcile human development and sustainable environmental management.
A consensus was rapidly reached in the scientific community and indeed, all efforts need to be done to support wildlife presence in non-protected areas and agricultural landscape.
The latest scientific data, agreed by the community, showed indeed that fencing forest reserves to keep animals inside would not be efficient especially for large roaming species, such as elephants; would be too costly to maintain and would isolate even further the current fragmented populations of wildlife found in Sabah.
On the contrary, designing ways to reconcile human development and wildlife presence in agricultural lands should be the way forward.
The participants also designed a series of recommendations to mitigate possible results of human-wildlife competition in non-protected forests and agricultural landscape.
Several solutions were offered according to the species or the crops being considered. However, the underlying message is to create mosaic landscapes where forests are still found within agricultural lands.
In places where the forest has been completely destroyed, efforts to recreate contiguous corridors of natural forest of at least 50 m wide along all rivers is needed, as well as setting aside stepping stones or continuous corridors across the landscape to support animals’ dispersal.
Results of this brainstorming session will be presented and discussed during an International Symposium to be organized in Kota Kinabalu in early 2019, that will gather government officials, agrobased plantation industries and scientists.