Sabah on track to expand Totally Protected Areas by 30pc

Kota Kinabalu: SABAH is on track to expand the size of its Totally Protected Areas (TPAs) to 30 per cent of Sabah's landmass within a decade. In stating this, Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman on Wednesday said over 21 per cent of the State's land are now gazetted as TPAs and is arguably the largest in the country.

This exceeds the International Union for Conservation of Nature's target of 10 per cent and the Convention on Biological Diversity's target of 17 per cent, he pointed out.

"Malaysia is one of the world's few mega-biodiversity hotspots. In Sabah, our tropical rainforests are of immense value, extraordinary beauty and are havens for a great number of plants and animals…

"We depend on well-functioning systems for our very existence and to meet our goals for sustainable economic development.

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"Hence, it is of utmost importance that our natural resources and biodiversity are safeguarded as natural capital for the benefit of current and future generations," he said during the opening of the International Heart of Borneo (HoB) Conference on "Bridging HoB Landscapes and beyond through Healthy Watershed Corridors".

On this note, Sabah is expected to hit 1.8 million hectares by end of this month, leaving around 400,000ha to go, it was later revealed by the Sabah Forestry Department Director Datuk Sam Mannan.

HoB is an initiative initiated by the World Wide Fund for Nature to keep around 220,000 of forested areas in Borneo. The initiative was signed by Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in Bali on Feb 12, 2007.

Also present were former Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi who is the adviser to the Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Bhd and his wife Tun Jeanne Abdullah who is the chairwoman, the Ambassador of Norway and Mannan.

According to Musa, both the Federal and State governments are placing all their effort on the conservation of natural ecosystems and biodiversity, adding that although much have been achieved to date, they will not be complacent.

This includes the commitment in the Heart of Borneo (HoB) Initiative, for which it has designated about four million hectares of the state landmass, mainly comprising important inland and highland forest ecosystem, as part of the programme, he said.

Musa also urged the conservation and restoration of watershed corridors between the HoB landscapes to ensure that clean water reaches the masses, wetlands and marine ecosystem where wildlife is abundant.

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He said lessons should be drawn from the June 5 earthquakes in Sabah that severely affected the local rivers and water sources, adding that poor management of these resources will have an adverse impact on Sabah's environment.

Meanwhile, Musa also noted that the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands status on Sabah's lower Kinabatangan-Segama Wetlands is also one of Sabah's commitment towards conservation, pointing out that it is the largest of all six Ramsar sites in the country.

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