Riding on a boat heading up a tributary of the Kinabatangan River with some friends some time ago, I saw this pile of logs stacked along the river bank and whipped out my camera and began snapping away. Reviewing the picture later, I realised it it said a lot about the environment of the area.a) small trees some barely 1metre in circumference are being felled for lumber because there are no more bigger trees there;
b) these small trees were likely to have been felled in a secondary jungle that has been cleared to make way for yet another part of an oil palm plantation and;
c) plantation owners are ignoring requirements for them to leave strips of forests along the rivers (or riparian reserves) and instead are planting the crops right until the water's edge though oil palm trees could be wiped out in the event of a flood.
Because of (c) wildlife such as the Borneo pygmy elephants are being squeezed in their remaining habitat (more of that in an upcoming posting).
1 comment:
Good for people to know.
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