Increase in Sabah land conservation areas

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s total protected areas has been increased by some 60% over the past 10 years and now constitute about 20% of the state’s land mass.

State Forestry Department director Datuk Sam Mannan said there were now about 1.35mil ha of protected areas compared to just 840,000ha in 2004.

Our long-term plan is to have two million hectares of protected areas in 10 years or about 30% of Sabah’s land mass,” he said, adding that these conservation areas include Ulu Segama-Malua, Northern Gunung Rara reserves that were under an intensive forest management programme.

He noted that the increase in protected areas has corresponded with a decline in revenue from the state’s forests. Mannan said the reduction in forest revenue was due to a deliberate policy to bring down timber harvesting volumes in natural forest to sustainable levels through various measures.

“The year 2013 is a record of sorts, because for the first time in perhaps 50 years, no short-term logging or Form I licences had been issued in forest reserves,” said Mannan.

According to Mannan, the forest reserves areas were now largely under the Forest Management Unit system with a duration of between 50 and 100 years subject to an annual work plan and forest management plan (FMP).

“A major component here is forest rehabilitation and restoration, apart from timber harvesting. The other components include recreation, research and conservation,” he added.

He said the approach was paying off with an increasing amount of timber coming from Sabah’s forest plantations. Some 1.2million cubic metres or some 30% of the state’s total timber production were sourced from forest plantations in 2011.

-thestar online.