Flora and fauna going extinct can be averted by EcoGeneration

Published on: Sunday, May 05, 2019

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In “Sabah’s wildlife may end up like rhino” 28/04/19, SM Mohd Idris , President Sahabat Alam Malaysia mentioned that “at least one-fifth of mammals found in Malaysia is facing extinction”. There is another international report to support a petition to save the animals saying that “we’ve wiped out nearly two-thirds of animal populations in just the last 50 years!”

So both are damn serious matters and I believe both statements refer to the animals in the wild.

I wonder how they know and they are more concerned with the animals in wild than our friendly animals like dogs in our homes.

I am very concerned that dogs are really going extinct and people are complacent or indifferent about it. Such extinction is already in the pipeline by design of the authorities and groups of people supporting that motive. How to stop this trend?

Those animals in the wild fall into the greedy hands of people who are more interested to destroy the natural habitat of the wild animals to make money for themselves in mono crops of oil palm and lesser into softwood.

As the greedy planters proceed to develop the plantations, many other greedy people also make money killing wild animals for food and global trafficking in such medicinal products. So is there any solution to prevent extinction of dogs and wild animals?

I think the message to everyone is that our dying earth for all known reasons is a certainty when our flora and fauna are near depleted to keep our earthly environment at a sustainable position. Are we so clever to outdo God with the once majestic earth at the beginning? Did God make a mistake to give us the Garden Eden with all the flora and fauna? Are we not about to go to eternity known and unknown to us sooner than later?

Many of us maybe perishing with the fast rising temperature as compared with the fairly cool environment in my childhood days in Labuan just before Malaysia.

One of our last few rhino Gelugob died in Lok Kawi zoo in January 2014 could have died due to heat wave in the environment in the zoo where the mud pond had little shade cover so unlike in natural cool habitat.

One of the main reasons for our diminishing dogs in our homes is our human attitude to care for them.

Don’t you see that birds of all sizes and pigeons are coming to residential areas for food when food in the jungles and forests have been depleted with poor quality and quantity of greenery.

So do we still have time to put our effort together to stop the declining flora and fauna which need each other when human beings need them most for our own existence? That is the imperative message for all.

For Borneo especially Sabah, we cannot rely on Heart of Borneo (HoB) alone for a sustained environment despite 11 years of global effort. Such effort must be tripled or many times when Sarawak and Kalimantan must increase its areas for HoB by several fold.

Apart from that, we need massive funds to make the desired impact in a range of enhanced activities to tackle the rundown Borneo first and reach out to other regions and then the ends of the earth.

For the funding intention we need to set up a private Flora and Fauna Foundation with seed money of USD$10m as part of the project for NGOs and individuals known as #EcoGeneration for social, charity and revenue generating industries in the green sectors.

#EcoGeneration after started would be a sustainable coalition of ecologists, consumers and environmentalists for a massive match to the global gigantic task to save the dying earth to save ourselves and we start this pressing project in Sabah to mitigate the crisis already at a late stage.

Let’s share the burden and don’t be deceived by all the piecemeal efforts lacking oomph to deal with our only earthly habitat with the “locked” resources we still have here on earth until we finally reach heaven. While we use our wealth in a mission to save the earth, we store our wealth in heaven.

Joshua Y C Kong