Forestry: an unnatural disaster in Sarawak

By Pak Bui

Sarawak Forestry Corporation Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and forestry department director Len Talif Salleh has dismissed the horrific ecological and infrastructure damage wrought by the Rejang log-jam as a “natural disaster”.

Len Talif argued that heavy rain, rather than over-logging or the impoundment of the Bakun Dam, had caused a catastrophic pile-up of cut logs and debris on the surface of Malaysia’s largest river. The accumulation of rubbish had blocked river traffic, wrecked boat jetties and killed fish and aquatic life, leaving communities without an important source of nutrition.

The forestry head tried to buttress his claims using technology. He said the 3D Airborne Hyperspectral Sensor taken on October 15 had shown the area was still covered by forest, but traces of landslides could be seen due to a heavy downpour at the Ulu Sungai Melatai catchment area.

Many Sarawakians are skeptical. They have traveled up the Rejang by boat, or have flown overhead, and have seen with their own ‘3D sensors’ – their eyes – the destruction caused by uncontrolled logging.

Seeing is believing

Yellow timber tracks snake their way up steep slopes, in clear defiance of forestry regulations. ‘Bystander’ or ‘collateral’ damage is obvious: smaller trees are uprooted when bulldozers move through the forest in search of more valuable trees.

The felling of countless smaller ‘bystander’ trees and the construction of tracks up sharp gradients has led to soil erosion. The roots cannot keep the earth intact, and the loss of canopy cover exposes the soil to tropical rain.

The results are plain to see. Although older folk remember clear rivers three or four decades ago, the Rejang river system is now dark yellow, or sometimes brown after heavy rains.

The ‘bystander’ trees hold little value for the loggers. Some are left by the river banks to rot. Other cut logs are also deposited along the river banks or in ‘log pools’, so that they can be pulled into the main river and then to the sea by barge. Some of these logs begin to decay because they are moved too slowly, and are finally left behind because they are no longer worth transporting.

The Forestry CEO failed to explain how heavy rain could have washed cut logs into the Rejang. It is likely that rain had caused landslides, but where did the cut logs come from?

There are only two plausible explanations: over-logging in the upper reaches of the Rejang, or dumping of logs from the clearing of forests at the site of the recently impounded Bakun dam.

Both the environment minister Wong Soon Koh and Len Talif himself have taken great pains to deny the impoundment, or filling, of the giant Bakun dam had produced the slew of logs and debris.

But angry Sarawakians may not be easily silenced. Sarawakians have not stopped demanding to know the source of the destructive mass of logs and flotsam.

The reasons for over-logging

Over-logging is common because of the timber concession system. This network of patronage and corruption allows logging companies a short period, typically five years, to extract timber from a licensed area. These companies work rapidly to recoup their investments in manpower, machinery and road-building. Logging has even gone on around the clock, with giant arc lights on at night.

This desperate harvesting frenzy has terrible consequences: the International Labour Organisation observed that 101 timber workers died from injuries in Sarawak’s logging industry in 1989 alone.

Another well documented result is the desecration of local natives’ ancestral land. Native communities have filed 200 court cases against the state government for removing their customary land rights, and have won several high profile cases.

The need to provide ‘rent’, or pay-offs to state officials allowing the timber licences, adds pressure to maximise revenue during the five-year lifespan of each concession. Loggers will stop at nothing to extract logs, destroying water catchment resources, crops, waterways, and even graveyards along the way.

Illegal logging (logging outside the licensed boundaries) is widespread and has even taken place within national parks, aggravating the damage from licensed or ‘legal’ logging. However, since licensed logging often obliterates the legal and constitutional rights of natives to their own land, the bureaucratic distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ is of no consolation to local natives.

Greedy timber companies also allow ‘re-entry logging’, or extraction on a previously logged area, before the forest is allowed to recover adequately, causing irreparable harm to the soil and ecosystem.

Defiant over reports of over-logging

Sarawak’s forestry has been heavily criticised by the Malaysian Auditor-General’s Office and countless independent observers, including the Hugh Blackett forestry mission, paid for by a local timber company, Interhill.

Local ministers, including second minister for planning and natural resources Awang Tengah Awang Hassan, were angrily defiant in the face of the Auditor-General’s empirical findings.

Interhill accepted Blackett’s portrayal of unsustainable and illegal forestry, but then proceeded to keep the devastating findings of his report as quiet as possible.

Len Talif’s credibility

How, then, are we to assess Len Talif’s credibility?

“We want to clarify the misconception and nonsense from an overseas source that the logjam was caused by over-logging or impoundment of Bakun dam,” he told Bernama. The overseas source presumably referred to reports by the BBC and the New York Times, both of which linked to our own Hornbill Unleashed reports.

Len Talif Salleh himself is a deputy permanent secretary in the ministry of planning and natural resource, serving chief minister Taib Mahmud and Awang Tengah. He was also the General Manager of the Sarawak Timber Industry Development Corporation (STIDC) statutory body until last January, working closely with timber tycoons.

He remains CEO of Sarawak Forestry Corporation (the privatised Forestry Department) as well as director of the rump forestry department in the government.

He is also a director in Hornbill Skyways, under scrutiny by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Agency for its governance. This furore is thanks to a messy lawsuit against the state-owned company by a former general manager turned whistleblower.

Len Talif has also raised eyebrows over his support for loggers over native rights. He admonished 17 Penan communities in Baram for declaring a Penan peace park to defend their native customary rights (NCR) land against loggers, saying Penan plan had “no legal bearing”.

On the other hand, he has also told Ulu Limbang communities defending their customary land that Forestry did not have the power to determine NCR status.

In a bizarre statement to the press last year, Len Talif attempted to cast doubt on Penan girls’ reports of rape by loggers in Baram, although he does not possess any qualifications in forensic investigation or criminal law.

This year, he attacked the Norwegian pension fund for withdrawing its RM50 million stake in Sarawak timber giant Samling. The investment fund had found Samling’s forestry practices were “unethical” and harmful to the environment. Len Talif said Norway’s boycott had challenged Sarawak forestry’s credibility.

Is his latest report of a “natural disaster” any less of a challenge to his institution’s credibility?

courtesy of Hornbill Unleashed