KOTA KINABALU: Sabah hopes to kickstart an elephant corridor project in Kinabatangan by the end of this year, says Datuk Christina Liew.
The state Tourism, Culture and Environment minister said with Borneo elephants now classified as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, the need to do better to protect these species has increased.
She said while the IUCN listing was important and put more emphasis on the conservation of this distinct subspecies of Asian elephants, there was also an urgent need to improve the protection of the pygmy elephants.
At the moment, there have been many discussions and talks about wanting to create a food corridor for elephants with food plants planted along the way, so that there would be reduced animal-human conflicts, she said.
“But we want to really go deep into this idea and make it happen. We will be having meetings with some non-governmental organisations next week and we hope to carry out this corridor project by the end of this year,” she said.
There is also a plan to work with an individual who recently owned parts of land in the Kinabatangan area, for the building of this corridor, said Liew.
On April 27, it was reported that a Japanese investor had expressed interest in building a wildlife corridor in Kinabatangan and even bought land to expand the wildlife corridor.
This investor is a wildlife lover who wants to protect wildlife and nature in Sabah.
On June 27, the IUCN website published an article on the listing of these elephants as endangered.
Primarily found in Sabah, the elephant, also known as the pygmy elephant, also has a small population in Indonesia’s Kalimantan.
According to the article, there are estimated to be just 1,000 left, including 400 breeding adults.
It stated that this species is genetically unique, having separated from other elephant populations tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago.
They are smaller and have distinct skull shapes compared to mainland elephants.
In the article, it mentioned that its Asian Elephant Specialist Group (AsESG) has facilitated the Bornean elephant’s inclusion in the Red List, emphasising the need for its conservation.
Pygmy elephants' peaceful nature has earned them the nickname "gentle giants", and they have unfortunately lost about 60% of their forest habitat in the last 40 years, primarily due to logging and the planting of commercial oil palm.
Many deaths have also been reported in Sabah (and continues to) over the years due to suspected snare traps, killings and poisoning.
