A way out for trapped Borneo elephants

These mammals are helped to safe havens via 'corridors' running through vast oil palm plantations.

KINABATANGAN: Sabah’s many endangered species, including the Bornean elephant and the orangutan, are finally being helped to safe havens via “corridors” through vast oil palm plantations that have encroached into their home.

With the habitats of these mammals becoming increasingly fragmented due to the rapid clearing of forests for oil palm and other industrial tree plantations, animal corridors linking them to untouched forests may be the only way to ensure their survival.

The State Wildlife Department announced the setting of an “elephant corridor” in the Melapi village in Sukau, Kinabatangan, which is home to an endangered population of the animals now trapped by the ever-expanding plantations.

Department director Dr Laurentius N Ambu said in a statement that the corridor had finally become a reality with the help of two private companies.

The newly created corridor stretches for 1km and measures about 50m in width and straddles the boundary of a wildlife viewing lodge and a plantation. It will allow around 200 trapped elephants in the lower Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary to move to new foraging areas.

The corridor is part of the elephants’ ancestral migration route which has been disrupted in recent years due to deforestation.

The effort was coordinated by the Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) and the Sabah Wildlife Department to address and minimise the impact of the previous large-scale oil palm plantation development and unsustainable logging practices.

Raymond Alfred, BCT head of conservation and research, warned that fragmentation of the animal habitat poses a key threat to the elephant population in Sabah.

Based on his previous research, the density of the elephant in lower Kinabatangan is estimated to be more than two elephants per km2 while the equilibrium density of the elephant ranges from 0.5 to 1.5 elephants per km2.

Based on this, the lower Kinabatangan range may not be a viable habitat at present for the elephants since the density of elephants in this area is 2.15 elephants per km2.

Human-wildlife conflicts

Alfred said linking habitat with forest corridors will improve the habitat viability; however, he added that without strategic intervention and conservation planning, the elephant’s population will be further fragmented and isolated.

Population isolation will make the species more prone to genetic drift and inbreeding, thus the threat to the Bornean elephant becomes worse due to the increase in the incident of human-wildlife conflicts in this corridor.

The orangutan population was also observed to have declined drastically in Sabah, especially in the lower Kinabatangan.

One of the key reasons the orangutan population is declining is the loss and fragmentation of habitat due to the conversion of degraded forests into large-scale plantations.

In south-east Sabah, 30% of the key habitats have been converted to other land use since 1970s. Assuming that the previous forest habitat supported a low density (0.75 orangutan per km2), the decline of the orangutan population within the study area is calculated at 150 orangutan per day for the last 30 years.

A survey carried out in 2003 and 2010 by Dr Marc Ancrenaz, director of the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation project or Hutan, and Alfred respectively showed that the orangutan population in lower Kinabatangan has declined from 1,100 to 700.

Several “bridges” have been jointly constructed by BCT, Hutan, Danau Girang Field Centre and other NGOs in lower Kinabatangan to allow the river-crossings of the orangutans.

Experts hope that it will help the orangutan population to meet and breed within the fragmented forest ecosystem.

Key stakeholders

The aim is to connect the orangutan population with the other large populations within the Deramakot Forest Reserve and the Malua Forest Reserve.

The current network of protected areas (conservation area, protection area and virgin jungle reserves) established in commercial forest reserves is unlikely to support and maintain viable populations of orangutans in the long term, primarily because most of these protected reserves, especially virgin jungle reserves, are not suitable habitats for orangutans.

For example, less commercial (profitable) forests are set aside as conservation zones in commercial forests. They are generally located in hilly, mountainous terrain and do not provide suitable habitat for orangutans. The hope is that the implementation of sustainable forest management will address the conservation needs of the orangutan.

BCT , a non-profit NGO established in 2006, provides a platform for the key stakeholders (palm oil industries, forest industries, local communities and other corporate sectors) to work together for biodiversity conservation, to support the implementation of the state’s species action plans and also the Sabah development corridor.

Working closely with Sabah Wildlife Department, BCT will initiate the Sabah Mega Ecological Corridor Programme, by the end of this year. The idea is to identify and determine the strategies that could effectively contribute to improving and protecting the ecological corridors.

This project will also look into a conservation mechanism that could be duplicated in other areas such as Tabin-Kulamba-Trusan Kinabatangan, Ulu Kalumpang-Ulu Segama, Kalabakan-Ulu Segama, Kalabakan-Kalimantan (Indonesia) in order to secure ecological corridors.

Alfred said that for the last 15 to 20 years, many conservation activities have been carried out by several NGOs in the state, to determine the ecological status of the species.

However, only a few of the efforts were able to reverse the threats or minimise the impact of large-scale oil palm plantation development and unsustainable logging practices.

At the moment, all results from previous researches are being used as a baseline and also as a guideline in implementing the species action plan to ensure the conservation requirements for orangutans, elephants and rhinoceros could be addressed.

The project is seeking potential conservation partners (key players in oil palm plantations and industrial tree plantation including other corporate sectors) and also co-operation from relevant government agencies and the private sector, to ensure that all conservation requirements for all the key ecological corridors in Sabah are highlighted, addressed and implemented with the key stakeholders.