RECENT calls have been made to allow wild boar meat to be sold once more in Sarawak. The rationale behind the current law and the protections it gives to rural communities have not changed, however. In 1998, Sarawak’s Wild Life Protection Ordinance, passed unanimously by the Dewan Undangan Negeri, permitted natives on NCR (native customary rights) land to hunt for their own subsistence but made it illegal to sell wild-hunted mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians.
These provisions of the ordinance were based on many years of research in different communities across rural Sarawak. The research showed that many such people still depend on hunting wildlife for their own subsistence but that, as in other tropical rainforests, the productivity of the resource is very limited (unlike tropical grasslands – picture herds of antelope in Africa).
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