Borneo Blog

I’ve been following several blogs written by tourists and visitors, relating their experience in Borneo, particularly in Sabah, the state where I come from.

One such blogs is “100 Days of SoliDude” run by this Erik Page guy. I think he is an American engineer based in Thailand.

Two-week adventure in Borneo

He recently had a two-week adventure in Borneo, spending most of the time in Sabah.

While in the Malaysian state on Borneo island, and he explored many places, several of which I myself — a Borneo guy — have never been to. He had climbed Mt Kinabalu, dived in Sipadan, gone off the beaten tourist track in Sandakan, met the proboscis monkey, and gone stone age in Long Pasia jungle.

I like his style of writing, although he misspelled Kota Kinabalu as Kota Kinabula.

An experienced driver — with six years of diving experience no less — he initially appeared to be skeptical about Sipadan being one of the world’s premier diving destinations.

Let’s see what my six years of diving has to say about that, he wrote; I can’t recall the exact quote though.

Spellbinding Sipadan

Then he went to Sipadan and came back to report that he might stop diving forever after this. Quote:

“I ended up doing 14 dives overall there! Saw sharks, turtles, barracuda, sea snakes, morey eels, cuddlefish, and a billion other things. It really was an amazing place.

“I think I need to stop diving forever now because I’m pretty sure everything else will be a let down.” [Source]

Way to go Erik, hope you’ve had the adventure you were looking for in Borneo; and hope you don’t mind me quoting your blog here.

As for the diving, well, you can always come back to Sipadan.

… and has a Master’s degree in natural resource management, corporate social responsibility or related field?

Or preferably has private sector experience and a Master in Business Administration degree and a minimum of 5 years experience in corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurship and extractive industry experience?

If you are, someone is hiring.

I’m not even close to qualifying for the job, which goes to show how formidable the task is to protect the Heart of Borneo.

Unesco’s World Heritage Committee, which met yesterday in Quebec City, Canada, has approved the inscription of eight more sites into the World Heritage Sites, including Georgetown in Penang and Melaka… in Melaka of course.

Kinabalu Park in Sabah, on the northern part of Borneo island and Gunung Mulu National Park in Sarawak, also in Malaysia’s Borneo, were included in the list in 2000. That makes four of us.

The committee said:

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It’s all numbers and logical consequences. If the rate of decline is faster than the rate of replenishment, you’ll eventually end up with the number zero.

That has been the case with Orang Utan population. It has been on the decline in the past decades at a free falling rate — whether in Borneo and in Sumatra — over the past few decades.

A latest study indicated that the rate of decline may have been sharper due to numerous reason.

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Borneo is losing its forest and losing it fast, especially in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo Island.

Sabah is not doing too bad according to the WWF map below and if some of the powers-that-be in Sabah and Malaysia could still make it right, there is every possibility that the vast tract of forested land will remain where its is.

There is hope. If and only if the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia as well as those of Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan are keeping to their promises of preserving the Heart of Borneo as shown below.

[Both maps are courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature]

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has extended the certification of the Deramakot Forest Reserve, Malaysia’s pioneer sustainable forest management area, as a well-managed forest for a further 15 years, reports the New Straits Times.

The re-certification, from April 21 this year to April 20, 2013 had made the 55,000-hectare reserve the longest certified rainforest in the world.

It was the first rainforest to have received the certification in 1997.

About Forest Stewardship Council

The FSC was set up in 1993 in the aftermath of the Earth Summit 1992 in Rio de Janeiro. It is an independent, non-governmental, not for profit organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

How does FSC certification make a difference in the world’s forests?

The FSC says in its website:

“All FSC certified forests must comply with FSC’s rules about how the forests should and should not be managed. When a forester decides to become FSC certified, he or she will make changes to comply with the relevant FSC requirements and become FSC certified. This is how FSC has a direct and permanent positive impact on the world’s forests and the people living from, in and around the forest.” [Source]

There you go. It looks like there is still hope for Borneo forest afterall, particularly the forest on the Sabah part of the island.

FSC General Assembly 2008

The FSC is now inviting participants to its General Assembly 2008 in Cape Town, South Africa on November 3-7 2008.

The FSC General Assembly, held every three years, is FSC’s highest decision-making body. I shall be keeping a close watch on the proceedings and see how it could affect our beloved island Borneo.

It would be good if I can attend the meeting as part of the media though. Just wishful thinking.

Malaysian palm oil struggles to promote ‘green’ image
Report by AFP

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia (AFP) — Malaysia is promoting its controversial palm oil industry as a model of eco-friendliness, but activists warn forests are still being destroyed to make way for vast plantations.

As palm oil prices boom, Malaysia has mounted a campaign to counter allegations that the crop is responsible for habitat destruction, air pollution from slash-and-burn farming, and pushing orangutans towards extinction.

It insists palm oil is only grown on legal agricultural land and that criticisms are an attempt by competitors in Europe and the United States to undermine growing demand for the commodity.

But environmentalists say that while virgin rainforests are now off-limits, tracts designated as “secondary forests”, which are also valuable habitats teeming with wildlife, are not being spared.

Junaidi Payne from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the government’s stance is misleading and that the race to fulfil demand for palm oil risks causing further deforestation, both legal and illegal.

[Read the complete report on why Borneo forest destruction remains despite effort to go green palm oil]

Greenpeace has released a report titled “Burning Up Borneo” where it mentions Unilever as one of the companies contributing to the destruction of the “last remaining habitats of the orang-utan and other wildlife”.

The report focus on oil palm plantation in Kalimantan, Indonesia.

I shouldn’t be too concerned because that the destruction is not happening in my homestate, Sabah, the Malaysian state on northern Borneo.

But Borneo Island, the once majestic island, is ailing and each day its natural forests are being destroyed to make way for man-made forest comprising thousands of hectares of oil palm.

In its press release, Greenpeace said:

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The Borneo pygmy elephant — long thought to be native of Borneo, the third largest island in the world — may not be endemic to the island afterall.

According to a new publication, the small-size elephant which is found only in Borneo — in particular Sabah, the Malaysian state on north Borneo — could be the last survivor of the Javan elephant race which is already extinct from its original habitat on the Indonesian island of Java.

Elephants as gifts between rulers

And the Sultan of Sulu — not the current one, but his forefather several centuries ago — might have played a role in bringing the elephant to his once sprawling Sulu sultanate.

WWF quoted Shim Phyau Soon, a retired Malaysian forester, as saying that the Sultan of Sulu might have brought the elephants as gifts between rulers.

WWF reported that:

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