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Kew Magazine
Conservation in action
Concern over the loss of irreplaceable, botanically rich areas of rainforest in Borneo has led Kew’s director Peter Crane to see the situation at first hand. He reports back on what’s been achieved and what still needs to be done
Climbing up into the rainforest canopy in Borneo at dawn is a terrifying experience: straight up the tall, ghostly grey trunk of a massive Koompassia tree to a platform 40m above the ground. And still you’re not at the top. But from here, as the mist clears, the true grandeur of the lowland forest emerges. This is a precious place and home to some of the world’s most charismatic animals.
The rainforest of Borneo
has been high on the international conservation agenda for decades. The
reason is simple – Borneo is one of the
world’s most important hot-spots of biological diversity and there
is still time to make a difference. Significant areas of several kinds
of forest remain, but they are under increasing threat from logging,
human encroachment and many other pressures.
Over the past decade, important help for conservation in the Borneo rainforest has come from the Darwin Initiative, which emerged from the Rio Earth Summit of 1992. Out of Rio came multiple international conventions, all with lofty long-term goals. But the UK Government also wanted action – and the Darwin Initiative was its response. The aim was to help countries that are rich in biodiversity, but relatively poor financially, to develop innovative approaches to conservation and sustainability through partnerships with biodiversity expertise in the UK.
Now, more than a decade after Rio,
over 400 projects have been supported in more than 100 countries through
a financial commitment exceeding £45
million. Borneo has been the target of several of these Darwin projects,
and the latest focuses on the conservation and sustainable management of
tropical forests in Sabah. Because much
of the remaining rainforest resides in the timber concessions of forestry
companies, this project aims to build improved capabilities for assessing and managing plant diversity. The emphasis is
on training – especially developing the skills needed to help identify
high conservation value forests and to implement sustainable approaches
to forest management.
In the UK, the project is led by Rogier de Kok and Tim Utteridge of Kew’s South-East Asia Regional Team, while in Borneo the key partner is Yayasan Sabah, a charitable foundation set up in the mid-1960s with the aim of improving education, health, welfare and other social services for the people of Sabah. Yayasan Sabah’s income derives mainly from managing about a million hectares of tropical forest, of which about 15 per cent is already devoted to primary forest reserves. These include the Danum Valley and Maliau Basin Conservation Areas, which are of global conservation importance.
The Danum Valley Conservation Area preserves some of the last remaining lowland rainforest in the whole island of Borneo. It is a pristine and more or less intact ecosystem of almost 450 square kilometres, dominated by giant dipterocarp trees, legumes and other trees. It is also home to globally significant populations of large mammals, such as the indigenous Bornean elephant, the binturong (a type of arboreal civet), the sun bear and the Sumatran rhino. Danum and surrounding areas also support more than 4,000 orang-utans – the largest population of this primate in the world. First set aside by Yayasan Sabah, Danum is now designated as a Class 1 Protection Forest Reserve by the Sabah state government. And as a result of a long-term partnership with the UK’s Royal Society, it is well monitored from one of the most active of all research stations in South-East Asia.
In contrast to Danum, the Maliau Basin contains relatively little
lowland rainforest, but it is nevertheless of great conservation importance.
Covering nearly 600 square kilometres, it is a remarkable block of tropical
forest – virtually
the entire catchment of the Maliau River – almost encircled by
a dramatic escarpment that rises to over 1,600m. The Basin includes spectacular
waterfalls and vast tracts of forest. Again, this area was originally
set aside by Yayasan Sabah and then formally upgraded to a Class 1 Reserve.
A few days in the Maliau Basin provides a truly authentic tropical rainforest experience. Year round, and day and night, the temperature rarely deviates more than a few degrees from its average of about 30°C. The humidity is always high, so dripping with sweat becomes a way of life. Torrential downpours are a regular occurrence – the region receives more than 3m of rainfall annually, which is about 1m more than the English Lake District receives in a typical year. Nothing dries out, not clothes nor camera gear, and even the shortest journey involves slithering up or down precipitous slopes that always seem to end in sandstone cliffs or white-water torrents. And the ubiquitous leeches take every opportunity to gorge themselves on any passing mammal. Leech socks are a must.
But, on the other
hand, the exuberance and sheer diversity of plant and animal life in Maliau
more than compensate for the challenging conditions. In the valleys,
immense dipterocarp trees dominate small patches of lowland rainforest,
which contain plants such as the legendary parasite Rafflesia, with
its enormous, malodorous flowers, and giant strangling figs. This is
also the habitat of the greatly prized ironwood – one
of the most dense and resistant of all tropical hardwoods.
A particular feature of the Maliau Basin is its large proportion of upland heath forest, a habitat quite distinct from the lowland rainforest. Here the trees are considerably smaller, often not more than about 10m tall. And the relatively open vegetation growing on poor soils with high rainfall encourages the growth of mats of sphagnum moss and acid-loving shrubs such as species of rhododendron and the tropical she-oak Gymnostoma. This is also prime habitat for the tropical pitcher plant Nepenthes – the Maliau Basin is home to about half a dozen species.
Perhaps the most
exciting recent development for conservation on the whole island of Borneo, and in part
an outcome
of the preparatory work for the new Darwin project, is the voluntary
designation by Yayasan Sabah of a new and very significant conservation
area. An exploratory expedition to the Imbak Canyon earlier this year,
which included Kew scientists together with partners from Sabah and
elsewhere in Malaysia, confirmed its truly exceptional conservation
value. It is the last remaining significant area of unprotected lowland
dipterocarp rainforest in Sabah and a
crucial link between Danum to the south east and Maliau to the south
west.
The conservation reserves at Danum Valley, the Maliau Basin and now the Imbak Canyon are a marvellous testament to the foresight of Yayasan Sabah in preserving large tracts of forest – for the people of Sabah, and also for the globally unique animals and plants that these areas sustain. It would be all too easy to harvest the timber and clear the land for oil palm plantations. Instead, watersheds are protected and key parts of the unique natural heritage of Sabah have been secured for the future.
The challenge now is how to manage the
forest matrix in which the reserves are embedded in the best possible
way. Working with the Royal Society South-East Asia Rainforest Research
Programme, the Sabah Forestry Department and ProForest UK, this is
the issue that the latest Darwin project will address. Well-developed
buffer zones, and forest management systems that encourage the free
movement of plants and animals among the three protected areas, will
be crucial. If implemented effectively they will ensure that the outstanding
conservation values of Maliau, Imbak and Danum are secure, and that
the global
significance of these remarkable places will continue to increase – rather
than diminish – for many, many years into the future.
Professor Sir Peter Crane FRS is director
of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew