Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Backbenchers Club supports the proposal for some of the 1.3 million hectares in Sabah currently under oil palm cultivation to be replanted with commercial timber species. "That seems to me a very practical way of increasing commercial timber production without affecting the natural forest acreage," said President Datuk Mohd Lan Allani who is Chairman of Sedco, said.
The proposal had been made by the Chief Minister, Datuk Musa Haji Aman, at the 14th. Malaysian Forestry Conference here last Monday in a keynote address delivered on his behalf by Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Joseph Pairin Kitingan.
Musa had said that by converting just five percent of the total acreage currently under oil palm to timber species like laran, sentang, acasia hybrid and rubber trees, the state's demand for wood could be adequately addressed within ten to fifteen years.
Mohd Lan said the state government should also hold serious discussions with the big, well-established plantation companies operating in Sabah to plant commercial timber on at least five per cent of the acreage approved to them.
"Some of these companies have been given tens of thousands of hectares of land which has already been planted with oil palm. They are all reaping good profits. Surely they have the resources and resilience to wait out the maturity period of fifteen to twenty-five years of any timber species they might plant on a small portion of their land," Mohd Lan said.
He said this could be made a mandatory condition in new and yet to be approved applications for agricultural or plantation land, especially where the area applied for was in excess of 1000 hectares.
He drew attention to the fact that while Sabah's sustainable forestry programmes and practices had been highly successful, it could not be denied that its reforestation efforts had not quite matched the expectations.
"The Chief Minister's proposal could be the key to resolving this problem," Mohd Lan said.
He said the state's declining revenue from the forestry sector could be offset by adding value to the domestic timber industry. He said one way of achieving this was to increase the number of timber and forestry based SME's engaged in manufacturing and downstream processing activities.
This is in fact addressed by the Halatuju which calls for suitable resource-based industries to be encouraged and developed in specific zones or corridors across Sabah," Mohd Lan said.
Hopefully that agenda will be pursued vigorously," he said.
