Why do elephants keep crossing roads in Peninsular Malaysia? That’s the question a team of researchers set out to answer in order to help find solutions to the growing risk of pachyderms being killed or injured on Malaysian roads. To do so, the researchers equipped 17 wild Asian elephants with…
A half century ago there were still around 3,000 tigers in the wild around Malaysia. Today there may well be as few as 250 left, less than a tenth of that figure. And if we don’t do all we can to save the last few hundred tigers, there won’t be…
As often, science can come to the rescue. This time for determining whether pygmy elephant tusks seized a few days ago in North Kalimantan, Indonesia, belonged to two male pachyderms that were recently killed in Sabah. Indonesian officials stopped a woman who was carrying five elephant tusks in Nunukan in North Kalimantan last week, and Malaysian officials…
A new bridge and a new road. They might be a boon in most places, but not in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, where any new infrastructure will likely pose a clear and present danger to resident animals. And so conservationists have duly raised the alarm about the prospect of a controversial new bridge and…
Barely a week seems to go by these days with yet more bad news about Malaysia’s beleaguered wild tigers. First came news of the death of a tiger at the hands of three poachers in Terengganu. Then came word of a blatant case of wildlife trafficking with a man carrying…
In the tropical rainforests of Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, one of the world’s largest-ever ecological experiments is under way. Called the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) Project, the study encompasses roughly 20,000 hectares of rainforest that is actively being transformed into oil palm plantation. Against a…
One of the largest ecological experiments in recorded history is being conducted in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. It has to do with three hot-button issues – palm oil, deforestation, and biodiversity – and it hopes to find a way to point them all in the direction of sustainability. Launched in 2010,…