On the first day of Syawal when the Hari Raya 2022 celebrations kicked off, expectedly the morning was a busy one, but not as hectic as the night that preceded it. You see, the announcement of the start of Hari Raya the preceding night caught many by surprise that some said, in zest, was a like a Raya terkejut or an unexpected turn of events on the start of the celebration.
Thousands were reported to be still on the roads and highways, which were choking with commuters rushing back to their hometowns and villages all over the country, hoping to get home in time a day before the Hari Raya starts – so that they can make all the necessary preparations for the celebration.
However, following the announcement, that very night many had to rush off to pick up supplies and/or to collect orders meant to be taken only the next day – the day which was thought by all to be the day before the Raya was supposed to start, namely, on Tuesday of May 3 2022.
The vendors have hastily sent messages to everyone to collect their orders that same night, to avoid a rush or even a possible stampede the next morning. The same scene was repeated all across the nation, no doubt.
I did the same as well as I have placed an order for some lemang, the mandatory and special traditional delicacy for the season, at that particular stall at Taman Datuk Harun that very morning. As it was not that far from Shah Alam, I have planned to collect them the next day. It turned out that except for Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia have agreed to set May 2 as the auspicious start of Syawal.
Apparently, the crescent moon was spotted in the skies of Labuan and Kalimantan that evening but not in Singapore. Probably, Singapore was under a different sky or the conditions were cloudy over there, specific to the island republic. Hence, there was discrepancy or lack of ASEAN synchronicity on the start of the auspicious month of syawal.
Despite the rather heavy head from the rush and long night of preparations, and followed by the elevated tension that morning, something quite beautiful happened, at least for me. I came across a Science Alert report which was full of fascination and wonder. The report related to my favourite subject, the Borneo rainforests and nature in general.
The report in question opened up a window of insight into one of the most ancient forests in the world – the rainforests of Borneo. Coincidentally, just a few days earlier, I was browsing through a beautiful book on the same subject which contained a scholarly and detailed account of the “Danum Valley, The Rain Forest”, located in Sabah.
The book was given to me as a thank you token for my small role in the conservation efforts of the Imbak Canyon
Conservation Area project, deep in the interior of Sabah.
The Science Alert report was a very recent article by David Nield, a contributing journalist at Science Alert, and was dated May 1 2022. The title of the article was an earth-shattering banner: Fossils of Leaves in Borneo Reveal an Ancient 4 Million-Year-Old Forest.
Wow, scientific research has confirmed something which we only instinctively knew. Yes, the Borneo rainforests is indeed something ancient and with a long evolutionary history – at least 4 million years old. Probably, going all the way to the time when Borneo was part of the supercontinent of Gondwana.
As this massive ‘Mother of Landmass’ started to break apart, the early ancestors of the dipterocarp trees were carried along with the portions of landmass that have broken apart-drifting over the millennia to where we find them today. And surely, would still be drifting today since continental drift is an ongoing process.
Apparently, the evidence of the drift can be found today from the presence of members of the dipterocarp species in the tropical regions of South America, Africa, and Asia – arriving there after eons of land drifting. Yes, Gondwana, that ancient super continent which gave birth to many land masses we see today was the home of our tropical rainforest trees.
Let’s pause awhile and let the information sink in, and deep into, the recesses of our minds. The rainforests have an ancient pedigree, longer than the humans inhabiting this Earth.
Now back to the Science Alert report mentioned earlier. The report began with the following statement:
“Leaf fossils on Borneo have been studied in detail for the first time, say researchers, revealing that the rainforests that cover the surface of the island have been in place and fostering biodiversity for at least 4 million years.”
It goes on to explain that the leaf fossils in question were from the dipterocarp species of trees which are still found to this day in Borneo, meaning, that these tree species have been around for a much longer time then any humans that may have latterly been inhabiting Borneo and the neighbouring islands and other landmass.
The second and immediate paragraph confirmed as much: “The current landscape, dominated by dipterocarp trees, looks much as it would have done during the Pliocene Epoch some 2.6-5.3 million years ago, researchers say – and that makes it a valuable ecosystem to preserve for future generations.”
The report mentioned that Borneo is home to almost 270 dipterocarp species, which is more than half the total global species. Borneo is the therefore the treasure trove and epicentre of the world’s dipterocarp trees.
With tropical Asian biodiversity currently under severe threat everywhere, Borneo plays a crucial role in supporting and sustaining that biodiversity. Provided, we allow that to happen by ensuring that our natural rainforests are preserved, or the degraded ones are rehabilitated, and conserved for the future generations to enjoy.
The dipterocarp trees that make up most of our forests are under threat because of their very nature – they are so valuable and therefore prone to being harvested for commercial exploitation. Ross Ibbotson, in his book ‘The History of Logging in North Borneo’ – an undoubtedly authoritative work for many years to come on the history of logging in North Borneo, mentioned that the logging started as early as in the 1870s and continuing “to the time when British North Borneo achieved its independence as Sabah, as part, with Sarawak and initially Singapore, of an enlarged Malaysia.”
Logging, it seems, has been an age-old problem or an old blight on the pristine environment that we have inherited.
Only the actors and players have changed along the way.
For the uninformed and uninitiated, the dipterocarps trees are a family of hardwood, tropical trees comprising about 500 species, with about 300 species or so are located on the island of Borneo.
Due to its size and location, Borneo is the planet’s biggest home to the dipterocarps – “Borneo is their centre of gravity, followed by Peninsular Malaysia, South Thailand, and then Sumatra – basically the evergreen tropical rainforests of the Sunda region is where they thrive. There are many genera, like Shorea, Dipterocarpus, Anisoptera, Dryobalanops, Parashorea, Vatica, Hopea, Cotylelobium, and Neobalanocarpus, with Malay names like Meranti, Balau, Kapur, Chengal, and Keruing, among others.”
See the report on Borneo as being the centre of gravity for dipterocarp trees in the Rainforest Journal: see https://www.rainforestjournal.com/dipterocarp-trees/
Borneo is still of significant importance in terms of tropical rainforests, albeit as a focus for necessary forest Conservation, Rehabilitation and Reforestation efforts. Do you know that the current tallest tropical tree in the world is a Shorea faguetiana in Danum Valley, Sabah?
Thank goodness, Sabah did a better job in conservation efforts which started back to the early 1980s (See introduction message by Tan Sri Datuk Khalil Datu Jamalul in the book, ‘Danum Valley, the Rainforest’).
My journey into the conservation of the tropical rainforests of Sabah was in fact with Tan Sri Datuk Khalil himself, a director of Yayasan Sabah, and who has had a lot of experience in this regard, in particular on the Danum Valley Conservation Area project.
The Danum Valley project started in the early 1980s, with the creation of two conservation areas, the Danum Valley and Maliau Basin, within Yayasan Sabah’s approximately one million hectares of forest concession.
In his introduction message in the book with its primary focus in the Danum Valley, Tan Sri Datuk Khalil alluded to other forest conservation projects when he used these words “While striving to progress beyond Danum Valley, Yayasan Sabah has not abandoned its commitment to improve Danum Valley.”
He also mentioned in the same introduction that “Yayasan Sabah has recently converted a substantial part of its concession area into another conservation area, the Imbak Canyon Conservation Area. With Petronas’ assistance, efforts are underway to turn the area into a centre of learning with specific focus on indigenous people and their link to biodiversity.”
The mention of Petronas in the message mentioned above is the link to my own involvement in the conservation and rehabilitation of the Imbak Canyon Conservation Area (ICCA, for short). My involvement in the early days of ICCA also enabled me to get to know Dr Waidi Sinun, a local Sabahan scientist and one of the proud Co-Authors of ‘Danum Valley, The Rainforest’.
As the co-chair of the Petronas-Yayasan Sabah Joint Steering Committee on the ICCA studies and the shepherding discussions between Yayasan Sabah and Petronas on the participation of Petronas in the ICCA, my role was to ensure that the duties, roles and responsibilities of the parties involved in the project are clearly defined and that issues arising in the course of the project have to be resolved amicably and professionally.
Next, was the key matter of funding of the studies and research on the project and the substantial expenditure required for the establishment of all the facilities in ICCA to help the necessary, and further research and studies to be undertaken effectively and in relative ease and comfort.
I won’t go into the details of how we managed to do it, but Tan Sri Datuk Khalil and myself found ourselves one morning at Level 81, Tower 1, Petronas Twin Towers in front of the then president/CEO of Petronas, Tan Sri Datuk Shamsul Azhar Abbas, making a pitch to the organisation to participate in the project, in particular to provide fundings for the project to kick off.
I can still recall the excitement of that morning, as if it was just yesterday, when we got the “Yes” response to our request and ICCA got its sponsorship.
The simple strategy that we took was to “Let Imbak Canyon speak for herself!” We believe that the beauty of nature as found in ICCA would be convincing enough to anyone with a open mind on the need for forest conservation and rehabilitation.
We prepared a video presentation that contained amazing footages from Imbak Canyon, showing flora and fauna, and rivers, waterfalls and streams, and anyone watching it won’t have the heart to resist its draw. Indeed, the Imbak Canyon did her job really well that morning, and we got more than seventy-million-ringgit sponsorship commitment that we sought.
Fast forward to March 26 2019, I was invited to attend the official opening of the Imbak Canyon Studies Centre by Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Panglima Mohd Shafie Apdal.
It was good feeling to be instrumental in initiating the Imbak Canyon Conservation Area (ICCA) project in 2010-2012, which started with a scientific and research study co-sponsored by Petronas. At that time, as head of the Group Corporate Affairs in Petronas, I co-chaired the Joint Steering Committee with Rosmawati Lasuki of Yayasan Sabah.
The findings from the study became the scientific and strategic basis that helped guide the conservation plans for the ICCA, among others.
In fact, I wrote several poems to try and capture the feeling and vibes of this special place called Imbak Canyon. I am pleased to share one of them, as follows:
If Trees Could Cry
By Maya Green
If trees could speak
What would they say?
If trees could speak
How would they pray?
If trees could cry
Will they be shy?
Yes, trees do cry
And that’s not a lie
And trees do speak
Thru the winds, they squeak
We have to try
With them to cry
But trees are shy
To cry out in pain
When we in the sly
Cut them down, with the chain
So hear you the pain
And in silence proclaim
To put away that chain
For of trees – we acclaim!
I can’t wait to make a return to the Danum Valley and Imbak Canyon, in Sabah. Perchance, to rekindle the spirit in such a beautiful place deep in the heart of the rainforests. Especially, by the spectacular waterfall where two rivers meet or for a dip in the pool adjacent to the forward camp at the foot of Mt Kuli in the Imbak Canyon, where we spent hours at the first dip taken there, admiring the pristine beauty all around.
