Sand dredging in a Borneo wildlife sanctuary is threatening the habitats of endangered pygmy elephants and a rare species of monkey, Malaysian activists said yesterday.
Sand-laden barges were once again moving up and down rivers in the Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary in Sabah State on Borneo, despite having previously been stopped, they said.
Harjinder Kler from the Hutan environmental group, said the erosion caused by the dredging would affect about 200 pygmy elephants and a few hundred proboscis monkeys living in the sanctuary.
“It will cause more and more of their habitat to be eroded and polluted as a result of the siltation from the dredging,” Kler said.
As the Kinabatangan river feeds into the Sulu Sea, she said the silt from the dredging would also pollute the Coral Triangle — a global center of marine biodiversity spanning Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guniea, East Timor and the Solomon Islands.
Most sand dredging works were halted following the creation of the Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary in 2005, a 26,000 hectare area in the north of the state.
Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Masidi Manjun said he was surprised that new permits were issued to sand dredging companies and promised a full probe.
Masidi said he had last week urged the oil palm industry to donate land along the Kinabatangan riverbank for conservation.
“I am very disappointed that such a thing has happened as we have been talking about creating a corridor of life for the wildlife on both sides of the river and this dredging will destroy all our hard work,” he said.
Pygmy elephants on Borneo are a sub-species of the Asian elephant. The creatures have a rounded appearance and are smaller than their mainland cousins.
Authorities say there are around 1,500 to 2,000 left on Borneo.
The proboscis monkey is mainly reddish-brown, with grayish limbs and has a distinctive large protruding nose, from which it takes its name.
It lives in the island’s mangrove forests, swamps and jungles but habitat loss and poaching have seen its numbers in the wild dwindle to around 1,000.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to