Minister: More rangers to be deployed at plantations to protect Sabah wildlife

A Borneo pygmy elephant carcass which was found by officers from the Sabah Wildlife Department recently.

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah will increase the number of wildlife rangers at plantations bordering forest reserves in the state to keep an eye on endangered animals in the wild.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Christina Liew said this move was in light of the recent unexplained deaths of six endangered Borneo pygmy elephants which occurred within the space of just over a month.

Currently, the Sabah Wildlife Department is understaffed with only two or three rangers stationed at plantations but the ministry will see to it that no less than 10 rangers will soon be deployed at each plantation, said Liew.

Liew, who is also Sabah Deputy Chief Minister, said her ministry will draft short-term and long-term solutions to curb such deaths of these elephants, which had been ongoing since the 1990s and has continued to baffle the authorities as to what the cause is.

"While the ministry has engaged in talks with plantation owners to tell them that these elephants are endangered and must be protected, we will also deploy more rangers at plantations so they can watch over these elephants.

"We also propose to engage a consultant in this field to do research and come up with a report on what we can do to solve the problem," said Liew on her first day clocking in at the ministry on Tuesday (May 22).

She added that the ministry will be reactivating the reward system for witnesses who come forward to report elephant killings.

"The reward system is already in existence but we will reactivate it again to encourage witnesses to report to us," she said after being briefed by her officers and the ministry permanent secretary Datu Rosmadi Datu Sulai.

Liew added that she had also spoken to Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal, who directed her to get to the bottom of the issue.

The carcasses of the six endangered Bornean pygmy elephants in the east coast of Sabah aged between one and 37 years were discovered on separate occasions since April 6, with the last one found on Sunday (May 20).

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga said the department had taken organ samples for toxicology and bacteriology tests and the cause of the deaths could only be fully determined once the results were known.

Post-mortem results showed the elephants were not gunned down.