Forestry Dept to investigate claims of illegal logging, forest conversion

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Forestry Department will investigate claims of illegal logging and forest conversion in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary (LKWS).

Its director, Datuk Sam Mannan, said the department was not aware of the alleged incidents.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of them. The lower Kinabatangan is mostly swamps apart from the wildlife sanctuary and about six small forest reserves.

“But we will look into it,” he told reporters yesterday.

The Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) claimed that illegal logging and forest conversion are threatening the wildlife sanctuary.

Its director, Dr Benoit Goossens, said ten years after the gazettement of the LKWS as a totally protected area, animals were still being poached and the forest where they live is destroyed.

“Within the last six months, the wildlife wardens patrolling in lower Kinabatangan have reported several acts of illegal logging and poaching. Some of these signs were recorded within Lots 5 and 6 of the LKWS, nearby Danau Girang Field Centre,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Goossens added evidences of illegal logging (tree stumps) and poaching (camera trap pictures of hunters) were continuously found in the Kinabatangan.

Dr Marc Ancrenaz, Scientific Director for the NGO HUTAN, disclosed that several species have disappeared from Kinabatangan recently: rhinoceros and tembadau for example. Other species that are still found in the floodplain are also declining: orangutans, proboscis, clouded leopards are disappearing and could be gone from the area in the near future.