Much at stake
Hilary Chiew, The Star 26 Jan 10;
The opening of a huge shrimp farm scheme in Setiu, Terengganu, threatens traditional livelihoods and wild habitats.
SETIU is set to be transformed into the country’s aquaculture showcase, courtesy of the RM60bil second economic stimulus package announced last March.
A mere 45-minute drive from Kuala Terengganu, it boasts a mesmerising rural landscape.
Facing the South China Sea are swaying coconut palms and sandy beaches. Not far into the hinterland, nipah and nibong palms line the banks of several rivers that run through the district. These bodies of water have sustained a unique fishery for generations in this district that is listed as the second poorest in the country.
Fishermen in several villages scattered throughout the Penarik area switch their fishing grounds between the sea and the rivers depending on the monsoon seasons as well as throughout the year. They could be catching fish in the sea in the morning and netting prawns from the streams in the evening.
The area also boasts possibly the country’s largest gelam (Melaleuca cajuputi) forest – a coastal heath forest – that conservationists say is little-documented but represents a vital ecosystem that should be conserved.
In fact, the area encompasses an array of inter-connected ecosystems that includes a brackish water lagoon, a riverine complex comprising the Setiu, Caluk, Bari and Merang rivers, and several wetland habitats such as riparian forest, peat swamp forest, freshwater swamp forest, gelam forest, mangroves and seagrass beds.
The diverse natural features of Setiu have been recognised in the Eastern Corridor Economic Region Master Plan for eco-tourism potential.
However, a large tract of the gelam forest has been felled to make way for Phase One of the 1,000ha Integrated Shrimp Aquaculture Park (i-SHARP). The Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) prepared by Blue Archipelago Bhd (BAB) was approved by the Department of Environment (DOE) in early September. The subsidiary of Khazanah Holdings, a government-linked company, has received RM10bil under the total RM60bil stimulus package to boost the economy.
Conservationists are perplexed by the approval of the project as it is sited on an Environmentally Sensitive Area Rank One according to the National Physical Plan, where only low impact educational and eco-tourism activities are permitted.
Apart from the loss of the gelam forest, the scheme to raise black tiger prawn and white-leg shrimp is sited along Sungai Caluk which is within the habitat of the river terrapin (Batagur affinis) and painted terrapin (Batagur borneoensis), two of the world’s top 25 most endangered freshwater turtles.
As the project intends to draw sea water through a tunnel for its 500 ponds, critics fear that the discharge of highly saline effluent into the river will cause a chain reaction that will affect the river ecology and its flora and fauna.
BAB in an e-mail response to StarTwo, argues that Sungai Caluk is not a freshwater river as it is connected to the sea via Kuala Merang and Kuala Setiu.
“As such, the salinity of the river can rise as high as 4.45 parts per thousand (ppt). Our water quality modelling shows that our water discharge will have minimal impact to the river system.
“However, to be doubly sure of our data, we are working closely with the DOE to monitor the water quality of the river for a period of 12 months so that real and accurate data can be used to remodel the impact of our water discharge. Should the result using the new data show a significant impact, we will not hesitate to further add mitigation measures to reduce the impact to the river system,” it said.
Conservationists have suggested an additional tunnel to discharge the effluent back to the sea. BAB, which is investing RM200mil in i-SHARP, did not respond to a question on why it was not taking up the suggestion.
BAB was incorporated in 2007 to spearhead the development of shrimp farming and its first project was a joint-venture with the Kedah state government to take over the faltering 360ha Kerpan aquaculture project. Kerpan was a black mark in the country’s aquaculture industy. Fertile rice farms were bulldozed to make way for the project in the mid-1990s. The Government had to deploy anti-riot police to quash the rural protestors.
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) questions the accuracy of the DEIA, saying that its data were from samples collected from a day’s observation.
According to the latest data from the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) which the DEIA consultants referred to, the salinity reading is well below 1ppt at all its monitoring stations.
WWF estimates that the project could discharge up to an equivalent of 50,000kg of salt into the river every hour when it is fully operational in 2011.
“It is doubtful that Sungai Caluk will have the capacity to dilute such a high concentration of salt, especially during the dry season when the river flow and volume are low. This will have a devastating impact on the river ecosystem and the river terrapins,” warns its executive director Dr Dionysius Sharma.
Another questionable aspect of river water modelling in the DEIA is the flow rate data. DID’s data during the monsoon in November and December last year was below 50 cu/m per second while those presented by the consultant was 55 cu/m per second outside the monsoon season. The flow rate will determine the dilution ability of the river.
Sharma reveals that as a DEIA review panel member, WWF has highlighted gaps and raised questions on the water quality modelling study in the DEIA and is of the opinion that the study did not accurately represent the dilution capacity of Sungai Caluk during the wet and dry periods.
“There was no official response to the questions and issues we raised on the DEIA,” says Sharma.
BAB, meanwhile, maintains that the DEIA is a result of extensive consultation involving 12 government state agencies, four federal agencies, 727 households in seven villages and non-governmental organisations such as WWF and Wetlands International. It says feedback from these parties have been incorporated into the report. It expresses willingness to address concerns about the potential environmental impact of i-SHARP.
Although the DEIA concluded that the project location does not affect any conservation plans, the Setiu lagoon as well as parts of the gelam forests are to be incorporated into the proposed Setiu State Park.
As the proposed park is reflected in the Setiu Local Plan, a document gazetted in February 2007, Sharma questions the legality surrounding the project approval by the state as well as the DEIA approval which were given without amendments to the Local Plan. He points out that under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976, proposed amendments to land use should go through a public review.
To this, BAB says the state executive committee has approved the rezoning of the area and it has also obtained the planning permission for the project and that the state planning authority will update the Local Plan accordingly.
It also says that it practises zero-burning and mulch the biomass from land-clearing at the site. However, charred logs seen at the site in November indicated that fire had been used to clear debris.
No honey, no money
The Star 26 Jan 10;
UNLIKE previous years, Zainal Ghani is not collecting honey from the gelam forest in Sungai Caluk. Instead, he is surveying felled trees in the cleared forest. Gelam trees bloom in the third quarter of the year. Bees collect the nectar from the flowers to produce the honey that is a traditional source of income for villagers like Zainal in the Penarik area in Setiu.
“Many people collect honey from these forests. Between September and November every year, we come in our boats and collect the bee nests on alternate days. A team of three persons can easily gather two or three nests in half a day.
“Each of us can earn RM200 from selling the honey in the market,” says Zainal. The 40-year-old from Kampung Beris Tok Ku learnt the skill of collecting honey from his father.
The loss of income from honey-collection is just the beginning of an uncertain future for Zainal and his fellow villagers. The impacts from the development of the Integrated Shrimp Aquaculture Park (i-SHARP) will alter the subsistence economy in the second poorest district in the country.
Fisherman Malek Yunus, 55, is convinced that the high salinity level in the effluent will contaminate the river and affect catch.
“How come they can build the tunnel to bring in sea water but not to discharge it properly back into the sea? We’re not against the project but it shouldn’t destroy our source of livelihood. Riverine fishery is more stable than off-shore fishery. They complement each other and provide us a predictable source of income.”
Malek says the basic household income is more than the RM500 claimed by the project consultants. He says on average, the fishermen earn RM70 a day from a variety of work. Villagers also cultivate watermelons, rice and oil palm.
He claims that the consultants did not meet any of the 40 fishermen of Kampung Beris Tok Ku although they are the ones dependent on an unspoilt Sungai Caluk.
“Perhaps they spoke to the village development committee but these people are not the fisherfolk,” he says.
Mohd Azuan Kassim of Kampung Mangkuk was offered a job by i-SHARP but he prefers to work on his own cage culture raising fish like barrumundi. He says villagers were not informed of the discharge.
“When we found out later, we disagreed with the project but we’re helpless. The effluent will flow through this part of Sungai Setiu and will affect my fish,” says the 27-year-old. He says the river is bountiful and provides a sustainable source of income for those who are willing to toil.
Further downstream at the Setiu lagoon in Gong Batu, the 80-odd cage culture ventures that were initiated by the Fisheries Department in the 1990s as part of a poverty alleviation scheme, also face an uncertain future.
Kamarudin Long is resigned to losing his oyster farm. He was looking forward to the declaration of the Setiu State Park but now laments: “What’s the point of having a state park only to destroy it?”
The swamps and lagoon are important spawning grounds for all sorts of marine life. World Wide Fund for Nature says 60% of wild grouper fries and oyster seeds in the country are sourced from this region.
Turtles in trouble
The Star 26 Jan 10;
FOR turtle conservationist Dr Chan Eng Heng, the Integrated Shrimp Aquaculture Park (i-SHARP) is bad news for the survival of two critically endangered terrapins.
In 2004, she pioneered research and conservation work on the river terrapin (Batagur affinis) and painted terrapin (Batagur borneoensis) populations in Sungai Setiu.
Upon her retirement from University of Malaysia Terengganu early this year, the marine reptile scientist set up the Turtle Conservation Centre (TCC) to continue efforts to augment the low nesting by restocking the population.
This is done by purchasing terrapin eggs from villagers, incubating them and releasing the hatchlings into the river. Thanks to Chan’s project, which has gained international recognition and financial support, the terrapin population has a chance to recover after decades of egg exploitation by the locals.
So far, 1,777 eggs have been purchased for incubation, representing half of the total number of eggs deposited mostly in Tebing Pasir Penarik, the major nesting bank for the river terrapin.
From these eggs, 1,128 hatchlings (overall hatch rate of 63.5%) have been produced and 500 released into Sungai Setiu. The hatchlings are partly raised in captivity before being released.
“Therefore, apart from the reproductively active adult population, the Setiu river network has a healthy population of young and sub-adult river terrapins ranging from three to 10 years of age. This developing population will continue to increase under the TCC’s efforts and will become the future generations of reproductively active river terrapins in Setiu,” explains Chan.
TCC has found that the terrapins typically occur in water with relatively low salinity of one to three parts per thousands. Hence, she has raised the alarm on the i-SHARP project that intends to discharge used sea water into Sungai Caluk, a tributary of Sungai Setiu.
“Studies (elsewhere) have found river terrapins to progressively lose weight as salinity increases. Their physiological conditions are impaired and they eventually stop feeding. Changes in the salinity regime of the Setiu river system will have dire effects on freshwater fish and prawns.
“The health of the river and its natural hydrological conditions must be maintained in pristine condition for it to continue supporting critically endangered wildlife, the livelihoods of fisherfolk and local inhabitants.”
She also criticises the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment for writing off many impacts as “non-issues”.
BAB has proposed the creation of Friends of Sungai Caluk (FSC) to lead conservation activities in a 2ha conservation site to preserve Sungai Caluk and its wildlife, as well as manage riparian vegetation along the river.
“We are presently in talks with the University of Malaysia Terengganu to conduct joint research as well as conservation activities under FSC,” it says.
