Frontier of Tropical Rainforest Conservation

Abstract

The Tropical Rainforest Ecosystem in the island of Borneo has been disintegrated and fragmented by uncontrolled togging followed by large-scale palm oil plantation development. The State Government of Sabah, Malaysia has developed Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) and established protected areas covering more than 157o of her land for Biodiversity Conservation. However, Sabah alone could not achieve the conservation goal in the present capitalism world. JICA' cooperated for BBECl' Program from 2002 to 2007 with Sabah and Malaysian Governments. Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) was established in the course of BBEC Program to tackle the fragmentation and disintegration of the protected area ecosystems through acquiring supports from private and public sectors in Malaysia and overseas especially Japan. BCT firstly aimed to develop Green Corridor to secrure continuity of the protected areas ecosystems along the Kinabatangan River. BCT expanded its targets to connect all protected area ecosystems. named as Sabah Mega-Diversity Corridor later. In eight years, 22 parcels of land were purchased. over 400 hectors of private lands are designated for conservation purposes, over 100 honorary wildlife wardens were trained in private sector, more than 8 study tours per a year to the area conducted, Orang-Utan population in Segaliut Lokan Forest Reserve were proven to be steadily increasing and the First Phase of Borneo Elephant Sanctuary was developed. About 60 million Japanese Yen generated in Japan to support BCT mission annually. However, majority of people and executives of large corporations utilizing palm oil and resources from tropical rainforest are unconcerned and quiet on the issue. Persistent efforts to acquire consciousness of people and business executives on the issue are needed to achieve results before the catastrophic ecosystem change occur.