Report: As human-wildlife conflict increases, some plantations see value in setting aside land for conservation

KOTA KINABALU, June 29 — After decades of going through human-wildlife conflict, plantations in Sabah are seeing benefits from designating land for conservation purposes.

Some, like the plantation-owned Labuk Bay Proboscis Sanctuary on the east coast of Sandakan, “accidentally” stumbled on its side hustle after a group of the primates stole their pancake lunch back in 1997.

Owners of the of Yet Hing plantation saw potential in wildlife sighting tours and after years of feeding the endemic and endangered primates with pancakes (without sugar), cucumbers and long beans, the plantation is now a full-blown tourist attraction.

In an Al Jazeera report, 69-year-old Michael Lee Hing Huat, who co-founded Yet Hing Plantation with his brother, said the sanctuary now consists of some 500 acres of mangroves in the 700-acre plantation which are on tourist trails for those who want to see the bulbous-nosed primates.

Lee said they not only left their existing mangrove areas intact but also acquired another 43 acres ― roughly the size of 33 football fields ― and sought the expertise of the Sabah Forestry Department to rehabilitate the mangrove and extend the monkeys’ habitat.

The idea is to create a wildlife corridor for the animals to keep them away from the crops, while also protecting the plantation by providing a buffer against the risk of floods. The sanctuary also helped recoup costs from the mangrove rehabilitation.

But Lee is also aware of conservationists calling Labuk Bay’s efforts “distasteful” and a “zoo”, claims their efforts have worked because the monkeys’ numbers have now doubled.

“We try to maintain the balance between economic activity and conserving the ecosystem of the mangroves along our plantation. The private sector can do it if they plan it properly. It’s not idealism or whatever. These two activities can come together,” he was quoted saying by Al Jazeera.

In rural Sabah, palm oil plantations extend as far as the eye can see on some roads, and are blamed for deforestation and displacement of wildlife. On a global level, there is pressure to boycott palm oil for unsustainable practices.

It is not unfounded as habitat loss and fragmentation is a significant threat to the region’s iconic wildlife such as the proboscis monkey, pygmy elephant and orangutan. The Borneon rhinoceros has already gone extinct while other species like the proboscis monkeys are declining by as much as 10 per cent each year.

Wildlife and plantation conflicts are inevitable as some 10,000 of the estimated 75,000 orangutans in Borneo, are now found on palm oil estates, while at least 200 elephants died in the last decade, many killed on or near palm oil plantations.

But for plantations like Labuk Bay and Sabah Softwoods Berhad (SSB), it is better to work with the wildlife to reduce conflict and damage to crops.

In a collaboration since 2012 with WWF Sabah, 7,000 of 60,000 hectares of the company’s timber and palm oil plantations in Tawau have been set aside for conservation.

This includes fragments of forest patches connected by a wildlife corridor running through the plantation, which is almost 14km long and 400 to 800 metres wide and serves as a bridge to the Ulu Segama and Ulu Kalumpang forest reserves.

According to its senior manager for environment and conservation Ram Nathan, SSB’s efforts has reaped benefits as crop damage from human-elephant conflict fell from some RM500,000 a year between 2004 and 2011, to RM5,000 in 2018.

In 2018, SSB joined hands with tour operator 1StopBorneo Wildlife to offer elephant safaris through their plantation where some 60 to 80 elephants roam.

The tours have been paused since earlier this year after a change of management at the plantation.

1StopBorneo founder Shavez Cheema said that the project site in Kinabatangan was now the best opportunity for wild elephant viewing with 89 sightings from 99 safaris.

The tours brought in RM30,000 in one year for the plantation, helping to recover losses from crop damages.

“We want to inform plantations that elephants are an asset, not a liability, that you can make money out of them,” he said.

Similarly, orangutan conservationist NGO HUTAN is working with Melangking Oil Palm Plantation (MOPP), which covers 8,000 hectares (19,768 acres) in the Kinabatangan area, in setting aside 500 hectares (1,235 acres) for conservation.

Hutan founder and IUCN Palm Oil Task Force member March Ancrenaz said that plantations were starting to engage with NGOs, possibly because the Sabah government’s declaration that palm oil operations in the state must be certified by the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) by 2025. One of the requirements are that companies set aside plantation areas for conservation.

At the moment, just 26 per cent of operations in Sabah are RSPO-certified, said Al Jazeera.

Danau Girang Field Centre director Benoit Goossens said plantations have also realised that setting aside land for conservation benefits their crops as it not only keeps a band of forests along the riverbanks to provide protection from erosion but is also good publicity for plantations facing questions over their environmental impact.

“I think they also realised that some of the areas they are exploiting are underproductive, so they can more easily decide to put it aside for conservation,” Goossens added.

However, some conservationists are not fully supportive of such tourism activities disguised as conservation.

“To be honest, I think if we want to conserve wildlife, we have to do it genuinely, because they have the right to live as we do ― not because they have monetary value,” said elephant conservationist Nurzhafarina Othman Nurzhafarina, who runs NGO Seratu Atai.

“Tourism is good, but sometimes tourism can also be very cruel, you know, towards the welfare of elephants.”

Goossens said there was benefit to the efforts but they needed to be regulated for the wildlife’s welfare.

“Protecting the mangroves instead of transforming them into a plantation, for example, and then bringing tourism in, I think that’s a good idea. But the rules and regulations, particularly the distance observed between humans and wildlife, should be well established,” he said.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Augustine Tuuga told Al Jazeera in an email that it had granted the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Sanctuary permission to be developed into a tourism destination provided they follow certain guidelines.

“The development of wildlife tourism-related activities in plantations’ [conservation] areas must first and foremost be communicated to the Wildlife Department in order to obtain the guidelines and advice from the department on the proper management of its wildlife and habitat to prevent any adverse impacts,” he added.

Whether there is room for tourism on plantations, many conservationists in Sabah say that at the moment, coexistence of humans and wildlife is not just possible, but necessary.