Hungry giants: A herd of Bornean elephants heading towards the pasture at Tabin Wildlife Reserve.
KOTA KINABALU: Following the success of the Napier grass initiative in Kinabatangan’s Bilit ecotourism area, non-governmental organisations are elated that Bornean elephants have started to forage on grass in neighbouring Lahad Datu.
“Two elephant herds entered the grass pasture at Tabin Wildlife Reserve on Aug 12. This is great to see and it has been their longest stay in the area,” said Borneo Rhino Alliance (Bora) chief executive officer Datuk Dr John Payne.
About 30 elephants, including calves, have been grazing in the area for more than two weeks.
The grass pasture, initiated at the southern fringe of the Tabin reserve by Bora in 2021, is an award-winning effort that kicked off the Napier grass planting project on a 20ha site.
The grant from the Hornbill Award helped Bora develop the area with government supervision and support from oil palm growers in the adjacent area.
“It is bearing fruit; the grass pasture is attracting elephant herds,” said Payne, who is also a trustee of Responsible Elephant Conservation (Respect) that was involved in the successful grass planting project at a resort area along the Kinabatangan River in Bilit.
Bora programme director Dr Zainal Zahari Zainuddin said the Tabin area was picked as part of efforts to keep the elephants within the Tabin reserve to stop them from straying into the neighbouring oil palm plantations, farms and villages.
Zainal, who is in charge of the work on the ground, said Bornean elephants in Sabah had become “addicted” to oil palm.
“Every elephant under the age of 40 in Lahad Datu and Kinabatangan has learned from its mother that the place to find plentiful food is not in the forest, but outside, in plantations or farms.
“What we are trying to do is promote a long-term and large-scale programme to attract them back into the areas that they are supposed to be – wildlife reserves, sanctuaries and forest reserves,” he said.
Zainal said the only thing that could divert the attention of the elephants from straying into oil palm plantations is lush grass – “not too short, not too old, along with concentrated mineral sources (salts)”.
Payne said the strong support by the Sabah Wildlife Department, Forestry Department and the nearby plantations enabled them to carry out the conservation work to reduce or eliminate human-elephant conflicts.
“This year, a grant from CIMB Foundation has allowed us to jointly expand the pasture to other sites on the fringe of Tabin.
“Collaboration is key. Bora and Respect have similar aims – to manage wild elephants by creating a series of feeding grounds. Every day when they feed there, is a day out of the estates, farms or villages,” he added.
Payne said elephants visited the Tabin pasture two or three times annually, but they still move back to oil palm plantations, especially in recent years with a massive wave of oil palm replanting.
“Both the chipped fallen trunks of old oil palm and new plants are constantly attractive to elephants because they find large amounts of easily consumed food,” he said.
The Tabin reserve pasture managed by the Tabin Elephant Pasture Alliance (Tepa) comprises Bora, WWF, plantation companies KL Kepong, Tradewinds Plantation as well as the Sabah Forestry Department, Sabah Wildlife Department and Tabin Wildlife Resort.
Respect chairman Alexander Yee earlier this month said the Napier grass initiative at Kinabatangan had borne fruit with elephants turning up to eat the grass planted in the vicinity of a lodge in early August.
