Elephants in Borneo now have full legal protection. Hopefully it will mean some real conservation value, although the stories one hears of habitat conversion to palm oil plantations does give one pause... Borneo elephants now classified as totally protected species
Final draft of the Elephant Management Action Plan 2020 - 2030 completed for the Bornean elephant in Sabah : Sabah’s Bornean elephants deserves proper, aggressive conservation measures: Liew
You'd think a country lamenting the extinction of rhinoceros in their country would be doing a little more to stop the same situation happening with their elephants.
Your post implied that the Malaysian government should be doing more than it currently is to prevent the extinction of elephants in their country... but I didn't read anything in those two articles implying that the elephant declines are because of government inaction. They state that suspects were arrested and are expected to face charges; that since 2016 the government has stepped up its wildlife laws; and that the government is attempting to pass a management action plan. That being the case, I was curious what inaction you were referring to and what additional actions they should be undertaking.
There is little point protecting wildlife when you don't protect the habitat that it needs to survive. Anyone who has been to Sabah or seen these wild elephants would agree with me that they are under severe environmental pressures. Oil palm plantations have been allowed to encroach so much of their habitat that conflict with humans is an inevitability.
Yes and no. Anyone who has only been to Sabah would be horrified at the extent to which plantations have replaced natural habitat, but if you've travelled more widely in south-east Asia you're more likely to see Malaysia's most ecotourism-friendly state as a model of sorts. Although plantations have encroached heavily, there is still a natural corridor of forest that surrounds the Kinabatangan and there are other reserves as well. It is also now relatively understood that if you can protect young oil palms the mature trees are relatively elephant proof so there is more reason for hope (although this won't help thousands of other species).
Interesting, you do have a point. It has been frustrating to see many developing nations bulldoze over their natural heritage and potential tourism revenue to make way for (often corporatized) agricultural plantations, especially in SE Asia with palm oil (I haven't been there myself, this is what I've gathered from reading about it). That being said, poaching elephants for tusks is a global problem as well; the tusks were taken in both of the November instances, so I thought ivory poaching was the primary motive.
What I took away from the Kinabatangan and indeed much of Sabah was wildlife on the edge. Both in terms of their existence and literally - living on the edge of plantations. Certainly, extreme encroachment on wild places something I've seen again and again in my travels around the world (most of Southeast Asia isn't much different and i've since seen the mountain gorillas definitely have it just as bad), but, just in terms of where I had been at that point in my life: it was Sabah that gave me my biggest shock. Even if you theoretically protect these corridors and small reserves of forest and find some magical way to contain the animals within them, their accessibility becomes an issue. I certainly had little difficulties finding wild elephants and orang-utans. And if I can, so can anyone. To answer your earlier question @Coelacanth18 , probably what I'd like to see is more corridors linking remaining forest islands, expansion of existing fragmented forest patches and larger buffer zones for critical places of habitat.
I agree, but compare that to, say, Vietnam where wildlife is off the edge, ie it's mostly all gone. Kinabatangan is a special case. It should be viewed as a partial success. At some points the forest is literally tens of metres wide between the river and the plantations, but it's still there. This is a legal and institutional victory, because protection has worked. It's not like the usual parks, where you get concentric rings of increasingly protected vegetation and land around a central core of ancient rain forest. What it actually is is a wildlife and forest corridor that protects the Kinabatangan ecosystem (we will both have seen the rope bridges the cross side creeks, allowing the contiguity of this area). So I think it's worth cautiously pointing out that in Sabah these corridors and reserves are protected. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be there. Sabah actually has 50% forest cover, which the local government has committed to maintaining. Now much of that is for sustainable logging rather than totally protected. There are issue with this; although sustainably logged forest can support many (most?) species, the lack of ancient trees is an issue for nesting hornbills for example. However, these are solvable issues. Again, it's worth pointing out that the Kinabatangan is unusual. If you go to somewhere like Danum you see a different, and more normal, picture. (it also doesn't help that the drive from KK to the Kinabatangan is so depressing in terms of seeing so many oil palms. I totally agree.
I'm pretty sure the Malaysian government includes oil palm plantations under "forest", which gives a false impression of how much is left.
Have you got a source for this? I couldn't find one and I would have thought if palm oil plantations were included the figure would be much higher than 50%.
I think where-ever I originally got it from, years ago, got it from the following study (https://www.forest-trends.org/wp-co...alaysia-white-paper-letter-14-0121-hr-pdf.pdf) (or from the original source which this one uses), which says "As of 2009, official statistics give the total forest area as 18.25 million hectares or 55.3% of the national land area. However, this figure appears to include tree plantations for timber production and independent satellite image analysis gives the proportion of forest cover as 45%." Note that this is the total forest cover for Malaysia as a whole. Malaysian politicians are still saying that the country has 50 or 55% forest cover (or saying that Sabah alone has that), which ten years later is clearly not going to be accurate. The study specifically says "plantations for timber production" which presumably does not include oil palms, but it does also discuss "closed canopy oil palm plantations" and how some categories of "protected forests" are basically designated as protected in order to convert them to plantations.
Interview with an expert on Borneo elephants : Sabah’s elephants will survive but watch K’batangan, specialist says | Daily Express Online - Sabah's Leading News Portal
