Wildlife corridors to save Borneo elephants – in pictures
Malaysia and Indonesia are home to the oldest jungles in the world and produce more than 85% of the world’s palm oil. However, cultivation and production of the oil have caused deforestation, pollution, land degradation and human-wildlife conflict.
Deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia has endangered the Borneo elephant, which depends on forest connectivity to survive, by isolating it from large foraging grounds. Now, some plantations are working with WWF-Malaysia to create ecological corridors to enable the animals to travel between forest patches
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Young and mature oil palms sit in front of natural jungle in the state of Sabah, Borneo. In Sabah, the government has committed to certifying all of its palm oil to RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) standards by 2025. As part of the pledge, it has forbidden further deforestation for oil palm expansion and it plans to increase protected area coverage to 30% of Sabah’s land. It is also a legal requirement for all oil palm producers to be nationally certified by the end of 2019
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Borneo elephants are endangered, with an estimated population of just 2,040. The main threat to their survival is the increasing loss of habitat due to the conversion of forest into agriculture plantations, which has left smaller pockets of forests in-between, isolating wildlife from larger forest blocks
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A Borneo elephant walks through a oil palm plantation and eats the trunks of felled old oil palm trees. Ecological corridors within agricultural landscapes are vital to the survival of the animals. These passageways enable native species to travel between forest patches to access fresh water and larger foraging grounds
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When fully grown, Borneo elephants eat up to 150kg of vegetation per day, feeding mostly on oil palms, grass and wild bananas. The elephants travel a great distance every day and depend on forest connectivity to access larger foraging grounds
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Plantation worker Dale Bacho poses for a photograph at Sabah Softwoods Berhad. There are more than 3 million smallholder farmers who depend on producing palm oil for their livelihood, making it an important crop for the GDP of emerging economies
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Bacho picks up oil palm fruit that have fallen after harvesting. Palm oil is an incredibly efficient crop, producing more oil per land area than any other equivalent vegetable oil crop. To get the same amount of alternative oils, such as soybean or coconut oil, would require between four and 10 times more land
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The growing demand for palm oil stems from it being extremely versatile and able to extend product shelf-life without altering the look or smell of food. Today, palm oil can be found in almost 50% of the packaged products in supermarkets – from food to cosmetics
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Bacho uses a sickle to cut down oil palm fruit bunches
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After experiencing significant issues with human-elephant conflict, Sabah Softwoods Berhad began to work with WWF-Malaysia and other neighbouring plantations to find sustainable solutions to crop damage. These include aligning electric fences to only protect young crops, so that elephants are able to access high conservation value areas and riparian reserves without their movement in the forests being hampered
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Uncontrolled clearing for palm oil plantation expansion has caused the deforestation of rainforests, most significantly in Indonesia and Malaysia, and is now threatening forests in South America and Africa. Forest loss, coupled with the conversion of carbon-rich peat soils to accommodate palm plantations, throws out millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere
