Sabah rural students join fight against wildlife poaching

KOTA KINABALU: Rural students are being roped in as part of Sabah’s fresh push against rampant poaching in the state.

State Tourism, Culture and Envi­ronment Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said his ministry would work with selected rural schools to carry out conservation awareness programmes among their students.

“We are looking at schools in certain districts such as Nabawan and Pensiangan where illegal hunting is still prevalent,” he said after launching the state-level World Wildlife Day at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park near here yesterday.

He said the effectiveness of the Wildlife Department and other authorities’ crackdown against poachers and the illegal sale of game meat was limited.

“It’s like drugs. Even though we have the death penalty, people are still involved in it,” Masidi said.

Earlier at the launch, Masidi said illegal hunting had become such a serious problem in Sabah that poachers were not hesitant venturing into conservation areas such as forest reserves.

“If we don’t do anything there will be nothing left in our forests,” he said, adding that there were not more than 10 Sumatran rhinos left in Sabah.

“We are facing the very real prospect of these iconic creatures becoming extinct in our lifetime,” Masidi said.

On the discovery of 19 turtle carcasses at a remote island in the northern Kudat district earlier this month, Masidi said the state government was considering setting up a Sabah Parks station there.

The Sabah Parks and State Wildlife Department would also increase patrols in the area, he added.

The discovery in early March at Pulau Tiga came just a year after a Universiti Malaysia Sabah team made a similar find of 60 turtle carcasses on the same island which is within the proposed Tun Mustapha Park.