Increase in totally protected areas in Sabah boost for wildlife

0

SANDAKAN: Re-gazettement of previously logged forest (secondary forest) into Class I Protection Forest Reserve by the state forestry department recently, has swung in favour of the orang utans living within totally protected areas (TPA) in Sabah.

Hutan–Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Programme (Hutan-KOCP) co-director Dr Marc Ancrenaz said the state government had shown its commitment to conservation by increasing the number of protected forests in Sabah.

“This will benefit, not only wildlife but also in the long term, the people of Sabah, as a whole,” he said in a statement here today.

Ancrenaz said, seven years after the results of Sabah』s first statewide orang utan census was published, the percentage of orang utans living within TPA had increased from 38 per cent to 60 per cent, due to the additions.

However, the biggest issue for orang utan conservation in Sabah remains the same, namely, isolation and fragmentation of TPAs, according to primatologist Dr Isabelle Lackman and Ancrenaz.

She stressed that all planned and future conversions of even small forest patches needed to be stopped to ensure the viability of the long-term survival of the orang utan population in lower Kinabatangan. –Bernama