Support for move to stop sand dredging along Kinabatangan

Ruben Sario The Star 28 Jun 10;

ENVIRONMENTAL groups are lauding the Sabah Government’s move of stopping a sand dredging operation along the ecologically sensitive Kinabatangan River.

And the state appears to be prepared to up the ante even further with Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun announcing that the government was considering imposing a total ban on sand dredging along the 560km waterway.

Last Wednesday, Masidi announced that the state Environmental Protection Department (EPD) under his ministry had been directed to withdraw an Environmental Impact Approval (EIA) for the sand dredging operation.

The department had approved the EIA report on the sand dredging on May 20, with EPD director Yabi Yangkat explaining the operation had fufilled the needs of Section 12(3) Environment Protection Enactment 2002 and Environment Protection (Prescribed Activities) Order 2005.

Interestingly, Yabi also said the Sabah Land and Survey Department had however issued the Temporary Occupation Lease (TOL) for the area concerned in September 2009, eight months before the EIA report was approved.

Villagers along the Kinabatangan and Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project chief warden Azri Sawang raised the alarm about the sand dredging after spotting barges laden with the material moving almost daily along the river.

According to Azri the local community was confused as to why such an environmentally damaging activity was allowed at the river by a government department when other departments were working so hard to protect the Kinabatangan river.

“It is very confusing. We hear time and again that the government is committed to protecting this area but here we find one department allowing this type of activity.

“As for us, we want to protect the Kinabatangan” he added.

He said that what was even more worrying, was that at least three barges were seen daily and all of them seem to have a permit valid for a full year’s operation.

“At this rate the Kinabatangan may be damaged permanently,” said Azri, who hails from Kampung Sukau which has been drawing tourists wanting to see the various wildlife such as proboscis monkeys, orang utan and Borneo pygmy elephants in their natural environment.

But wildlife experts have been worrying about the future of these animals as the remaining tracts of forest along the Kinabatangan were fragmented and surrounded largely by oil palm plantations.

The concern is not only about a limited amount of habitat and food sources but the continued isolation among groups of animals that would lead to in-breeding, eventually causing a decline in the population.

Masidi’s ministry along with other groups have been working to create forest corridors to enable the animals to move between the fragmented forests.

And when announcing the retraction of the approval for the EIA report, Masidi wondered aloud how it could have been approved in the first place.

“There was an apparent failure to take into consideration that the state government is creating forest corridors in the Kinabatangan to allow the movement of wildlife among fragmented forests.

“It simply does not make sense for a department to allow for something that contradicts this initiative,” he said.

Perhaps all these could have been prevented if the authorities had drawn up a list of identified environmentally sensitive areas such as river banks, coastal zones and certain hill slopes that would be off-limits to ecologically damaging activities.

If all these had been in place, perhaps the worries of the Kinabatangan village folk would have not materialised in the first place.