Oxford wildlife research unit creates a conservation tool kit for Sabah
KOTA KINABALU: The Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildlifeCRU) of Zoology, Oxford University in the United Kingdom has created the WildCRU’s Conservation Tool Kit for the conservation of forest biodiversity and the Sunda clouded leopards in Sabah.
Founder and now Director of WildCRU, Professor David Macdonald from Oxford University said this tool optimises the trade-off between conservation and development.
He founded WildCRU in 1986 as the first University Conservation Unit in the world whose mission is to undertake research that could be useful.
“We hope we have created a gift, a present, for your Government that you might find useful to Sabah and conservation. The story is: we spent more than 10 years led by Dr Andrew Hearn (Postdoctoral Researcher and Scientist) living in Sabah trying to find out the ecology of a special species in Sabah - the Sunda clouded leopard, and to use that to understand the relationship between conservation and development.
“We (WildCRU) were trying to understand the basic ecology of this remarkable charismatic apex predator. We wanted to do that so we could use it as a model for understanding forest conservation.
“There will always be some tension between development and conservation but we believe we have made a tool to help get the answer right when Sabah faces difficult choices. That will be a triumph for the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment and for the Government,” said David during a courtesy call on Deputy Chief Minister cum Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Christina Liew.
Citing an example, David, who first set foot on Borneo at the age of 20, touched on the 2033 Structure Plan for Sabah where they explored 58 different possible developments (examples, new roads, new railways, etc).
“In each case, we model how the distribution of the clouded leopards and the linkages of the corridors would be affected by each development plan. And that, we believe, gives us a tool, a powerful scientific method that your Government and your officials might find helpful in evaluating the best compromise, an optimal compromise between development and protection of nature,” he enthused.
He hoped the Government would be interested in using the WildCRU Model to help in the decision-making process when considering developments like roads, hydropower, reforestation or restoration of certain habitat.
David introduced members of his WildCRU Team - Dr Andrew who dedicated his life to Sabah and difficult field work, Dr Samuel Cushman, a world expert in landscape ecology for planning (Director, Centre for Landscape Science, US Forest Service, USA, and WildCRU, University of Oxford), Dr Dawn Burnham who is the Manager of WildCRU and a conservation researcher), Dr Zaneta Kaszta, a Postdoctoral Conservation Researcher, and Chrishen Gomez, a Malaysian who is the Research Manager of WildCRU, University of Oxford. Currently, Dr Andrew and Chrishen are based in Tawau.
The Minister expressed her appreciation to the Team, saying their mission is not profit-orientated.
“Kudos to WildCRU. You are doing something great for Sabah. Just imagine Dr Andrew in particular has spent 12 years of his prime life doing research in Sabah. What a sacrifice! It is a struggle to strike a balance between sustainable development and wildlife conservation,” said Liew.
Meanwhile, David shared that WildCRU ‘invented’ this project (Wildlife Conservation Research in Sabah with focus on conservation of forest biodiversity, landscape and clouded leopard) 12 years ago.
“Five years ago, I was fortunate to raise a big grant to undertake a big project about this animal with the hope that one day, we would get to this
position of having found out enough. And that is, to meet with a State Minister like yourself (Liew) to say we have produced the huge data set and understood the new techniques to generalise to the whole landscape,” said David.
“And now we are in a position to offer help for the compromise between conservation planning and development. We are at the end of that first journey, so we are at the turning-point. And now we have to think where do we go next from here. Researchers are always short of money,” he continued.
While the WildCRU Team as wildlife and conservation people are very interested in protecting the species, its habitat and the environment, the Professor acknowledged the fact that they are also humans and understand the importance of development, human development.
“Therefore, we are interested in the well-being of nature and the well-being of people and the importance of development. So what we want is to find the best, the optimal compromise that allows people and nature to live together. If we are just fascinated by nature and we don’t care about people and development, we would get nowhere,” David explained.
WildCRU’s next direction in Sabah will be influenced by the Ministry’s and State Government’s forthcoming decision whether the Unit’s continuing work can be helpful to the State.
Expressing WildCRU’s intention to move forward, David said the team would like to work with the Minister, her officials and the Government on what is most useful to the State but based on Science.
“We have got to this point...finding our own money and doing our own work. Of course, you (Minister) may decide whether this is a ‘gift’ you want or otherwise. If you decide to go forward with us, if you decide that our approaches are useful for Sabah, then we would be very honoured and happy to work with you and the Government to try and develop a bigger project for the future. Our goal is to be useful people. Maybe we could somehow collaborate, as government and university can make a powerful team,” he suggested.
In response, Liew said that she would have a meeting with the Ministry’s senior officials and the Government before arriving at a decision whether WildCRU will maintain its work as it is now or have a bigger scope of work, adding that any funding will have to be within the capacity of the Government.
The Minister concurred with Prof David that the clouded leopard is a beautiful, charismatic and important species where Sabah has the best population.
“Preservation of wildlife is precious to the State while it implements its development agenda. The clouded leopard is God’s gift to Sabah,” she remarked.
Confirming this, Prof David said Sabah has the most clouded leopards compared with Sarawak and the Peninsula, adding “Sabah is the jewel in the Crown.”
According to scientist Dr Andrew, the estimated population size of the Sunda clouded leopard in Sabah is in the region of 750.
“That’s not many...but this (Sabah) is really the ‘hotspot’ in Borneo,” he quipped.
Liew was amazed to learn that WildCRU have two million images of the clouded leopard from camera-trapping. Further enlightening the Minister, the Director of WildCRU said WildCRU’s detailed understanding of the animal is based now on camera-trapping.