LAHAD DATU: The northern portion of the Ulu Segama-Malua forest, once ravaged by logging and fires in the 1980s and 1990s, is now becoming more habitable for its prized inhabitants – the orang utan.
Today, some seven years after a 10-year project was started in 2008 to reforest and rehabilitate the orang utan habitats in North Ulu Segama Forest Reserve (now known as Bukit Piton Forest Reserve), a 50-minute drive from here, its success is evident.
As Sabah Forestry Department director Datuk Sam Mannan said: “It is probably one of the few examples in the world where a very bad story has been turned into something that we can be proud of!”
The credit mainly goes to the state government, which works in collaboration with Yayasan Sime Darby (YSD) – Sime Darby Bhd’s philanthropic arm – on the project, as well as World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Sam said WWF had documented the primates frolicking in the rehabilitated forest close to the department’s base camps.
“They are even coming near the base camps. We’ve given them a sense of security.
“I’ll tell you this – if the orang utan is going to survive as a species in this world, chances are you’ll find most of them in Sabah because we know how to rehabilitate their habitats,” Sam told a press conference at the department’s headquarters in Sandakan recently, following a media visit organised by YSD to Bukit Piton Forest Reserve.
YSD’s reforestation and orang utan habitat rehabilitation project there, costing RM25mil, is aimed at restoring 5,400ha of heavily degraded forest, as well as to enhance biodiversity conservation and restore the area’s flora and fauna.
According to YSD, the project has facilitated the reclassification of the area into a Class 1 Forest Reserve in 2012, thus protecting it from future logging activities or development.
In the mid-1980s, there were some 20,000 orang utan thriving in their five main natural habitats in Sabah, according to WWF statistics. By 2004, their numbers had dropped 40% to 11,000, no thanks to deforestation and logging.
In 2007, WWF reported that the Ulu Segama-Malua forest was home to a large number of orang utan. Unfortunately, the very existence of its estimated 3,500 orang utan was being threatened by their logged forest environment, as well as the limited sources of food and shelter.
The department had also acknowledged two habitats in Ulu Segama – one in Malua with 700 orang utan and the other in Bukit Piton with 350 – were at a “very critical stage”.
Besides the depleting sources of food, the fact that both Malua and Bukit Piton have rivers separating them from the rest of the forest also contributed to the severity of the situation as the orang utan could not swim across the rivers to “migrate” to other parts of the forest in search of fruit trees.
“This raised the potential of them being stranded there and starving as well,” Sam explained.
He believed that the YSD-Sabah government project had succeeded in creating some kind of bond between the primates and the human beings.
“They are becoming more familiar with us,” he added.
The project also focused on the planting of tree species which bore fruits favoured by the orang utan.
Some 95 species, including seraya punai, binuang, bayur, petai, telisai, sengkuang, durian, rambutan and sepat, will be planted during the duration of the project. In fact, some of the trees are already fruiting.
Ulu Segama-Malua district forest officer Indra Purwandita Henry Sunjoto said the replanting process there was different from conventional planting catering to logging.
“We have to be very careful in terms of the species that we choose as they have to suit the specific locations where they are being planted.
“Not every point (in the forest) needs to be replanted. Points that already have natural plants providing fruits for the orang utan are kept intact,” he said, adding that it cost RM5,000 to execute and replant each hectare. — Bernama
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