September 6, 2023
This article by Bernama is timely as it alludes to several key issues in nature conservation that deserve greater attention and action, by governments (in terms of land policy), corporate oil palm growers (in terms of their wider responsibility, in view of the vast areas of formerly biodiverse lowlands that they now control) and civil society organisations (in term of what roles they can and should be playing).
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December 5, 2019
Daily Express 27 Nov 2019 KOTA KINABALU: Former WWF Sabah Director Datuk John Payne (pic) said there were many missed opportunities to save the Sumatran rhino. Sabah’s last known Sumatran rhino, Iman, died last Saturday and questions were raised as to how the beast that managed to survive for millions of years in Sabah’s primeval forests was allowed to become extinct.“In 1980 IUCN experts discouraged Sabah from capture of rhino because it was considered too risky,” Payne said.
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December 5, 2019
By Avila Geraldine NST Online, November 24, 2019 KOTA KINABALU: Malaysia has done its level best to save the Sumatran rhinoceros since the 1980s, including mooting breeding programmes and pursuing conservation collaborations with key parties – all to no avail.
November 14, 2019
This Letter to the Editor appears in Pachyderm: Journal of the African Elephant, African Rhino and Asian Rhino Specialist Groups (Issue 60): June 2018-June 2019.
October 15, 2019
KOTA KINABALU: In vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment on an egg retrieved from Iman – the last Sumatran rhino in Malaysia – failed earlier this month.
September 30, 2019
KOTA KINABALU: A single egg cell – that is all that scientists managed to harvest from Malaysia's last living female Sumatran rhino – Iman. The egg cell (oocyte) was harvested at the Tabin Wildlife Reserve in Lahad Datu on Monday (Sept 30).
September 1, 2019
Humans are susceptible to the shifting baseline syndrome. We imagine that what we see from our childhood up to today is what is normal … what has been so for a long time, and what will be so for the foreseeable future. This view can be more dangerous to wildlife than poaching and habitat loss.
September 1, 2019
The most fundamental biological requirement of all animals is food and water. In the context of Malaysia and Indonesia, we could imagine under a different array of historical and current human attitudes that Sumatran rhinos could live in oil palm plantations, feeding on woody weeds, with wild cattle feeding on the grasses, together avoiding the need for herbicides.
August 17, 2019
Some rhinos in human care don’t reproduce well, which complicates efforts to sustain these important insurance populations. Scientists have worked for years to develop reliable means of artificial reproduction, with limited success.
August 17, 2019
JAKARTA Aug 10 2019: The governments of Indonesia and Sabah-Malaysia have agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conservation of the Sumatran Rhinoceros (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis) in Indonesia next month (September).
BORA has recently launched a pair of publications that compile all our knowledge on the food plants of wild Bornean Orangutans. The aim is to energise what we believe to be actions for the conservation of our endangered red apes.
This publication was produced as part of the "Experimental Habitat Restoration for Orangutans in Kinabatangan landscape", a project by the Sabah Landscapes Programme under WWF Malaysia, funded by Unilever.
"An Illustrated Guide to Bornean Orangutan Food Plants" is a practical toolkit and provides a road map to enrich set aside lands within the mixed landscape of oil palm plantations which dominate Sabah's northeast to contribute to Orangutan conservation.
The actions are uncomplicated and can be easily adopted. What now remains is for key stakeholders, particularly the plantation sector, to adopt habitat enrichment as their contribution to safeguarding Sabah's wildlife.
The publication may be downloaded for free here.
"Habitat Restoration for Fruit-eating Wildlife" is a handbook illustrated with over 80 photos. It provides a comprehensive guide to all aspects of propagating, planting and maintaining native trees, hemiepiphytes and lianas, with an emphasis on Ficus (wild figs) in the equatorial region of Borneo.
Together with text that outlines the bigger picture, the publication provides details of good nursery practice, vegetative propagation, seed preparation and storage, and strategies for dealing with common problems.
The publication may be downloaded for free here.
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