KOTA KINABALU: THE Sabah Forestry Department wants to set up a dedicated wildlife enforcement team as poachers have become daring in forests and reserve areas.
Its chief conservator of forests, Datuk Sam Mannan, said this specialised squad would be supervised and coached by the department’s existing enforcement team, whose members were deployed statewide.
The squad of 50 people was expected to undergo training in Thailand. It included the use of firearms, and they would be stationed at priority areas like the Tabin wildlife reserve, Kinabatangan and Ulu Segama.
They would focus on protecting endangered species like Borneo Pygmy Elephants and Sumatran Rhinos. The department hoped to deploy the team as soon as it sorts out the estimated yearly funding of RM2 million.
“We have about 100 firearms (in our enforcement personnel inventory). But there are occasions that our staff is unwilling to use them against poachers.
“So, we need to take a stronger approach against poaching and recruitment of rangers must be done properly.
“We have started training some of our people and we are going to meet the chief minister (Tan Sri Musa Aman) soon to get his approval for deployment,” he said after the launch of the Heart of Borneo (HoB) International Conference 2017 here recently.
During the event, the department also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with non-profit organisation Sabah Environmental Trust (represented by chief executive officer and founder Dr Rahimatsah Amat) and Yayasan Sabah (represented by director Datuk Sapawi Ahmad) to form a dedicated patrol team in the Danum Valley-Maliau Basin-Imbak Canyon (DaMaI) conservation area.
The MoU was among eight signed by the department. The agreements were related to environmental conservation and forest sustainability.
On whether it was possible to train and use dogs in wildlife law enforcement, Rahimatsah said such efforts had been tested in the past, but the authorities found that more time had to be spent to care for the canines because of the vast forest grounds to cover.
But, he did not discount the possibility of using them.
Earlier, Sam said Sabah was spending about RM150 million on forest management annually, where RM100 million was used to run the department, and RM50 million from the federal and state governments went to programme development.
When launching the event, Musa said Sabah had given much emphasis on best practices in the agricultural sector.
One such initiative was the Sabah Jurisdictional Certified Sustainable Palm Oil, a 10-year programme launched in late 2015 to have all Crude Palm Oil (CPO) produced from the state to be Certified Sustainable Palm Oil.
“It is my hope that by 2025, all oil palm plantations, both large and small, are fully certified.
“I am grateful for the support of stakeholders, such as Forever Sabah and the Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), in providing technical advisers to guide the CSPO process, which is crucial given its complexity and limited timeline.”
Musa said the HoB conference, which includes participants from Indonesia and Brunei, as well as Sarawak, allowed for a broad partnership programme at local and international levels in managing natural ecosystems.