KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has seen a huge improvement in wildlife protection and prosecution of related offences over the past few years, especially following the introduction of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Project.
Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment minister Datuk Christina Liew said this INL project under the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), a research institute in Kinabatangan, and the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), has borne positive results.
“The INL pilot project has produced the desired results. Notably, it has established specialised teams in the SWD for intelligence and forensic work,” she said in a statement on Wednesday (Aug 16).
“I was informed by the Director of Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) that since 2019, there has been no more killing of elephants and marine turtles,” she said.
The INL (International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) Project: Boosting enforcement and forensic capacity to deter wildlife trafficking in Sabah runs for five years from 2019 to 2023.
Liew said she was also told that under the SWD’s training programme, they have established an Intelligence Unit (IU) and a Forensic Unit (FU) that are now led by two young officers Natalia Nadia Yahya and Nur Alwanie Maruji, respectively.
She said both the DGFC and the SWD were recently awarded funds by the US Government to reduce wildlife trade and improve arrest rates, and the quality of prosecution of wildlife crimes in Sabah by building investigative and enforcement capacity within the SWD.
“This was being achieved through the development of specialised teams that will work closely with relevant agencies and stakeholders; generation and dissemination of key intelligence information; and the handling and processing of wildlife DNA evidence to expedite the resolution of wildlife crime cases,” she said.
Liew received a courtesy call from Grant Officer Representative Allison Lajeskie (Counter Wildlife Trafficking Southeast Asia and Pacific) from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Office of Global Programs and Policy in Washington on Tuesday (Aug 15).
Briefing the Minister, Lajeskie said the purpose of her five-day visit to Sabah was to meet with people to better understand the realities on the ground with regard to wildlife trafficking, and also to see the progress of the INL support through the DGFC.
In commending what the DGFC had done so far through the project, she said the DGFC created so much from the ground level to be able to offer what is beneficial for Sabah.
In her presentation, Scientific Adviser and Project Coordinator Dr Milena Salgado Lynn, who is based at the DGFC, enlightened the minister on the activities progress of the INL Project.
These include two workshops, 31 training sessions (60 over trainees), 300 plus investigation reports, more than 20 long-term investigations, some 10 arrests and two convictions.
"We have also created a wildlife crime database at the SWD, and that may be accessible to other wildlife-related agencies in Sabah, Sarawak and the Peninsula,” she said.
“To enhance inter-agency cooperation, we have established an inter-agency intelligence working group which has been jointly trained," Dr Lynn added.
According to her, poaching and other wildlife-related illegal activities in Sabah prompted the DGFC and SWD to apply for a US Government grant for the INL Project five years ago.
Confirming the wildlife-related convictions, SWD director Augustine Tuuga listed some examples including one where a four-year jail sentence was meted out to an Indonesian man in 2021 for killing an endangered Borneo pygmy elephant in Tawau in 2019, and another where a foreign national was jailed four years and fined RM200,000 for possessing the body parts of green turtles in Semporna in 2022.
