Shafie (fourth right), Ali (fifth right) and Henry (right) during the WWF Malaysia courtesy call yesterday.
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is still on the right track in the aspect of environmental conservation.
In fact, according to WWF Malaysia conservation director Dr Henry Chan, Sabah is now the world leader when it comes to the size of its Totally Protected Areas (TPAs).
He had applauded the State Government’s efforts to ensure that Sabah could reach its target of gazetting 30 per cent of the state’s forest as TPAs.
“To date, we have 26 per cent; which means that we only of have four more per cent to go. With that kind of policy (reaching 30 per cent), Sabah is actually the leader in the world,” Henry told reporters after WWF Malaysia’s courtesy call on Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal yesterday.
Henry also praised Sabah for having all of its forest reserves certified and for also ensuring that all its palm oil plantations are certified according to the requirements of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
“We are a world leader. A lot of organisations are looking to Sabah right now…WWF is also working with the State Government to ensure that the orang utans, elephants, turtles and things like that will be conserved,” added Henry.
He further revealed that based on a recent survey, it was found that Sabah has a total of 11,000 orang utans – which is a stable population.
“We are working with the plantation companies and the smallholders to ensure that elephant conservation can be incorporated into their plan,” he said.
Meanwhile, WWF Malaysia chairman Tunku Ali Redhauddin, who led the courtesy call, had thanked Shafie for his support for WWF Malaysia.
“We just had a courtesy call with the Chief Minister. It was very kind of him to host WWF Malaysia at his office here. WWF has been working with Sabah for many years now since 1972.
“We have been working on many different initiatives. Today we discussed on some of our key initiatives working in the Semporna area as well as the Living Landscapes Programmes, which seeks to help resolve any potential issues relating to human-elephant conflict and other things,” said Ali.