Sabah mulls new 'life corridor' for elephants

Kota Kinabalu: The State Government is contemplating creating a new "corridor of life" linking three known pygmy elephant habitats which will have ample food and thus ensure their survival through minimising conflict with humans.

They are the Lower Kinabatangan Managed Elephant Range (MER), Tabin MER and Central Sabah MER in the Danum area.

The forests in these elephant habitat are a mix of primary and secondary forests. Elephants eat grasses, roots, fruit and bark.

They use their tusks to pull the bark from trees and dig roots out of the ground. An adult elephant can eat 300 pounds (136kg) of food in a day,and drink up to 150-200 litres of water per day.

"For a start, we will consider planting vegetation (grasses and shrubs) in the three areas individually before connecting the areas at a later stage of development.

"The aim is to create a sustainable food chain within the three Managed Elephant Ranges. Such move will avert crop damage in the oil-palm plantations andsmallholdings," a joint meeting involving the two State Ministries concluded.

The Ministries involved are the Ministry of Tourism, Culture Ministers (Datuk Christina Liew) and and Environment and Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry (Datuk Junz Wong).

This is in view of 116 elephant deaths recorded between October 2010 and September this year. Of this, 30 elephants died this year alone, the latest, a female aged between 12 and 15 years, died at the Gunung Rara Forest Reserve (Tawau) on October 18.

According to Dr Roza, a veterinarian with the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) who conducted the post-mortem, the elephant died due to a fight with other elephants.

It was decided that given the loss of habitat, the 2,000-odd elephants need a "home" so that they will not encroach into oil-palm plantations and risk getting snared or shot to death.

"Bornean pygmy elephants are a 'prestige' breed as they are peculiar to Borneo. We are intensifying our efforts to protect the elephants and prevent their extinction.

"In the meantime, we need the cooperation of plantation owners and workers in not causing any harm to the animals but to inform the relevant authorities (Sabah Wildlife Department) in the event of any encroachment," the Ministers said in a joint statement.

Expressing the Government's determination to resolve the human-elephant conflict, Liew, who is also a Deputy Chief Minister, and Wong stressed that political will is indispensable in this respect.

"A special task force will be set up, comprising officials from the ministries and relevant agencies," they said. The SWD has been entrusted with the task of preparing a paper on the proposed Resolution of the Human-Elephant Conflict in Sabah for submission to the State Cabinet. Assistant Director (Bornean Elephants Conservation Unit) Dr Sen Nathan has been asked to prepare the paper.

The DCM said the joint meeting was in response to the call by Chief Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal to the two ministries to collectively address the outstanding problem.

It was unanimously agreed that the Sabah Forestry Department be enlisted in the Elephant Protection Cause. Its Director will be invited to attend the next meeting.

Breakdown of the total number of elephant deaths is as follows : 2010 (2), 2011 (6), 2012 (5), 2013 (23), 2014 (6), 2015 (15), 2016 (20), 2017 (9) and 2018 (30).

Number of elephant deaths by district is as follows : Died in captivity (2), Keningau (1), Tawau/Kalabakan (35), Lahad Datu (30), Kinabatangan (31) and Sandakan/Telupid (17).

The meeting also discussed the possibility of getting agencies under the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry to "adopt" one or two elephants in the interest of their well-being. Liew suggested that the previous plan of "loaning" an elephant to the Rasa Ria Reserve in Tuaran, be re-visited if possible.

Rosmadi conceded that with the presence of 15 elephants, there is congestion at the LWP. "Ideally, by international convention, the zoo should have only four to five elephants. So the rest should be in the wild but then there is not enough food," he said while emphasising the need to relocate 10 elephants to other areas.

Meanwhile, the Minister questioned Tuuga over the five-month delay in the completion of renovation works at the LWP. It was supposed to have been completed by the end of September. Rosmadi said the works will be completed by the end of October.

The issue of smuggling of plants was also brought to the Minister's attention.

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Thirty-Year-Old Elephant Found Shot Dead In Malaysia

Malaysian police are investigating after a 30-year-old elephant was found dead. Having been shot twice in the head and once in its rear, the bull's trunk and tusks had also been removed.

According to Malaysian news outlet the Star Online, Bukit Aman Internal Security and Public Order director, Commander Datuk Seri Zulkifli Abdullah said the elephant is thought to have been killed a week ago.

"The dead animal was found some 15km from the main road of Jalan Gerik-Kuala Kangsar," he said.

After receiving a tip-off, a team including police, General Operation Forces (the light infantry arm of the Royal Malaysia Police) and the Department of Wildlife and National Parks arrested four men aged between 40 and 49 at various locations on Sunday.

"One of them led the police to a house in Kampung Padang Jeri where they found two rifles, two homemade shotguns, RM10,500 (£1,900 / $2,700) in cash, 255 bullets, wire traps, machetes, chainsaw and various hunting equipment," said Zulkifli.

"We also seized a deer horn and seven bone fragments, believed to be from a tiger. All four suspects will be remanded until March 18 to be investigated for possessing illegal firearms, unlicensed weapons or ammunitions and for carrying weapons in public."

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Malaysia: Two more pygmy elephants found dead without tusks

KOTA KINABALU: Another two Borneo pygmy elephants were found dead without their tusks in eastern Sabah.

One of the carcasses of the elephants was located in a plantation near the Dumpas area on Sept 10 while the other was found floating along the Kinabatangan river close to the Danau Girang Field Research Centre a few days ago.

Sources said it was difficult to pinpoint the area where the second bull was killed before the carcass was dumped into the river.

Sabah has been faced with the threat of wildlife poaching, especially of its endangered elephants which numbers around 2,000 in forests in eastern Sabah.

Six pygmy elephants, including the unique sabre tusk jumbo, have been reported killed over the last six months.

The Sabah Wildlife Department said they have no new leads or suspects in both the new cases.

Nevertheless, investigations are ongoing to identify the perpetrators.

The department's director, Augustine Tuuga, said the death of the elephant in Dumpas revealed no external injuries.

He said that they have taken blood samples to establish the cause of death while the second elephant might be a victim of poaching.

Wildlife officials were also probing the case of a green turtle found butchered on the shores of Pulau Bum Bum in Semporna which was highlighted in a Facebook posting on Wednesday.

At least nine dead turtles were seen in the photo uploaded on Facebook.

Tuuga said they were verifying the reports and carrying an investigation into the deaths.

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Plantations in Sabah losing millions because of elephants

KOTA KINABALU: Oil palm plantations are losing millions from damaged crops, sometimes spanning 30 hectares in total, when elephant herds raid the area, says the Sabah Wildlife Department.
Its director Augustine Tuuga told FMT that smallholders were hit the hardest as they could sometimes lose up to six hectares of crops in just one night.

“Elephant raids are a major problem for plantations in areas where elephants are found.

“These herds damage oil palm trees and eat the shoots, causing the companies to incur big losses,” he said, adding that Sabah Softwood Bhd for example, reported a loss of RM3 million a few years back.

He said that the problem of elephant raids had become so dire that most of the department’s ground staff were in Kg Gambaron in Telupid to deal with the issue, bringing to a virtual standstill, investigations into the recent case of suspected poaching in Kinabatangan.

The department estimated that there were only 2,000 Borneo pygmy elephants left in Sabah and although the number was considered acceptable to many, Tuuga said he was cautious about their survival rates if poaching continued unabated.

He conceded that most of the elephant poachers were locals, who killed the endangered animals mainly for their tusks.

“We found that these tusks were sold overseas but many also sold them to the Timorese who have a custom of offering elephant tusks as dowries.”

On Thursday, the department released a statement that it was investigating suspected poaching activities after an elephant carcass was found floating in the Kinabatangan River near Sg Koyah on Monday.

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Sabah Customs seizes elephant tusks, pangolin scales worth RM80.5 million

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Customs seized three tons of elephant tusks and five tons of pangolin scales, valued at about RM80.5 million, which were believed to be on the way to be smuggled through Sepanggar Port to another country on August 29.

Customs director-general Datuk Seri T. Subromaniam said the 1,148 elephant tusks, worth RM9.9 million, and pangolin scales, valued at RM70.6 million, were seized during a check on two containers declared as containing groundnuts on Aug 30.

"The elephant tusks and pangolin scales are suspected to be from Nigeria, Africa and had passed through the port of a neighbouring country before entering the country," he told reporters here today.

Also present was Sabah Customs director Datuk Hamzah Sundang.

T. Subromaniam said following the confiscation, a 43-year-old man had been remanded under Section 135(1)(A) of the Customs Act 1967 to facilitate investigations on suspicion of importing prohibited items.

He said investigations were also carried out under the Prevention of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Act whereby the accounts of suspected individuals and companies would be suspended.

The final destination of the containers was believed to be China but the matter was pending Customs' investigation, he said.

He said Malaysia should not be regarded as a transit for smuggling of prohibited goods but needed to be viewed from the aspect of the department's success in curbing the activity even though it had passed through the port of a neighbouring country.

"I want to warn any syndicates not to use ports in Malaysia for smuggling, especially prohibited items," he added.

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Another Vietnamese Ivory Smuggler is Nabbed at KLIA

And on and on it goes. The smuggling of ivory into and out of Malaysia, that is.

Exasperating? You bet.

Encouragingly, however, Malaysian officials tend to be on the ball and keep making arrest. The latest such arrest has involved that of a Vietnamese national who was trying to take 36kg of partially processed elephant tusks out of the country via Kuala Lumpur International Airport. The tusks, which had been cut up, tied up into 10 packages and packed into two suitcases, would have been worth around RM300,000 (US$70,000) on the black market.

The Vietnamese smuggler had brought the African elephant tusks from Addis Ababa, using Malaysia as a stopover. If convicted of trafficking, he is facing up to three years in jail and a hefty fine under Section 135 (1) (a) of the Customs Act 1967 for illegal importing prohibited goods into the country.

A Malaysian Customs officer displays the ivory contents of one of the two suitcases seized from a Vietnamese trafficker at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

This latest case serves as yet another reminder that Malaysia continues to remain a hub for international ivory traffickers, several of whom are Vietnamese. In March last year Malaysian customs officials intercepted two Vietnamese men who were found to have 101kg of ivory inside their luggage. The same day officials discovered another haul of elephant tusks, amounting to 58 kilograms, in the bag of another Vietnamese passenger who had just flown in from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and was on his way to Hanoi.

But it’s a two-way street. Just as illicit shipments of ivory are brought into Malaysia, so other shipments are taken elsewhere from here. Only a couple of weeks ago customs officials in Hong Kong discovered 7,200kg of elephant tusks shipped in from Africa via Malaysia. Valued at around US$9 million, it was the largest haul of contraband ivory seized in Hong Kong in three decades.

“A string of recent seizures in Malaysia has put a spotlight on wildlife trafficking between Africa and Asia,” explains the anti-wildlife trafficking watchdog TRAFFIC. “[It] shows that illegal traders continue to use Malaysia when smuggling wildlife products into and through Asia,” said the group’s Acting Regional Director for Southeast Asia, Kanitha Krishnasamy. “It is important that African, Malaysian and Vietnamese authorities to work together to break the links in this cross-continental illegal wildlife trade.”

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