Intense rainfall, not logging cause of Sg Katibas wood debris — Forest director
The floating wood debris at the confluence of Sungai Katibas and Sungai Rajang near Song town is due to intense localised rainfall within the Ulu Katibas catchment, said Datu Hamden Mohammad.
The Sarawak Forest Department director said the incident was not caused by logging as claimed by certain quarters.
“We sent our team since last week to monitor the situation and to find out what was happening in the area.
“Based on the satellite data acquired on March 3, it showed that about 10 sites where major slips or landslides had occurred with the Ulu Katibas catchment,” he told reporters.
Hamden was met after the opening ceremony of the International Conference on Sustainable Management of Tropical Forests, here yesterday.
He said that as of now, the occurrence of landslips was in the Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary where there are no logging activities.
“This area is our totally protected area and is very far in Ulu Sungai Katibas,” he added.
He further said that based on meteorological and hydrological data, the high intensity of localised rain that had occurred within the Ulu Katibas catchment could have caused landslides along Sungai Nyawai, Sungai Takai and Sungai Kalimau Besai, which are within the catchment.
“On average, these landslides are about the size of a football field, but their occurrences are numerous within these sites.
“Due to the landslides, we also found that this had resulted in water bodies and the flooding on the forest grounds brought down all the debris and uprooted the trees.”
He acknowledged that there are logging activities along Sungai Katibas, but said his department had imposed a buffer zone for the area.
“Logging activities are there also but they have a systematic way to do it and there’s also the buffer zone that we imposed, so this incident (floating debris) is not much on the logging activities but more of a natural disaster,” he said.
He also said that the floating debris consisted mostly of small fragments of wood.
“Since last year, we have started to clean all the rivers especially Batang Rajang where we issued a special licence to a company to remove all the big logs. About 8,000 tonnes of logs from the debris have been removed from Batang Rajang and this initiative is still ongoing.
“It is harder to remove the smaller fragments unless we have a log boom, but we found out that it is not suitable for Batang Rajang because it is not strong enough. So we will leave it to nature,” he said.
Hamden said officers from his department, Sarawak Forestry Corporation and Natural Resources and Environment Board Sarawak are still conducting a joint aerial investigation at the site.
“We are monitoring the situation and will revert back once we have feedback from them,” he said.
The floating wood debris was found accumulating at the confluence of Sungai Katibas and Sungai Rajang near Song town on March 3.
Flash floods upriver are believed to have carried down debris from tree trunks and branches of fallen trees.
Katibas assemblyman Lidam Assan had on Monday called for authorities to monitor the indiscriminate felling of trees along Sungai Katibas.