SANDAKAN: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is offering a RM50,000 reward in exchange for information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of the persons responsible for the killing of a pygmy elephant found in Beluran.
RSPO chief executive officer Datuk Darrel Webber condemned the killing of the endangered pygmy elephant found with gunshot wounds and without its tusks at an oil palm plantation in Beluran last Saturday (Oct 19) morning.
“The reward is a small gesture to help with the efforts on the ground and will be coordinated through the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD),“ he said in a statement here today.
The carcass of the adult male elephant was the second discovered with gunshot wounds less than a month after another pygmy elephant carcass was found at Sungai Dumpas, Kalabakan, Tawau on Sept 25.
The elephant found dead in Beluran was believed to have died about five days before being discovered by plantation workers.
“Those responsible must be brought to justice and stand accountable for their vicious actions.
“These recent killings are symptoms of a larger problem - a problem that will only grow if we, collectively, do not intervene,“ said Webber.
Having been involved in conservation work in Sabah, he said he knew that elephants in the state have two major issues - elephant ranges and migration paths have been severely impacted by development leading to a steady increase of human and elephant conflict, which could sometimes be deadly; and elephant poaching for tusks may be on the rise.
In tackling those two issues, he said a holistic approach was needed, backed by local stakeholders and with appropriate resources.
He also stressed on the urgent need to study the population, size and growth of the elephants for better understanding on how to accommodate the species based on Sabah’s landscape.
“It is in the best interest of Sabah’s major industries, particularly the tourism and oil palm sectors, to have a well managed elephant population.
“Both sectors must work hard to find out what those roles are. Otherwise, we will end up with these recurring, deplorable acts,“ he said.
Webber said RSPO understood that balancing the needs of a large species that move over great areas, against the needs of the local human population will be a challenging and thorny issue.
“We hope that the current initiative by the Sabah government, industry, and civil society to address the sustainability of the palm oil sector at a jurisdictional level can help contribute towards a holistic approach in managing the elephant population in Sabah.
“Within this initiative is the identification of important conservation areas and hopefully corridors for elephant migration can be kept open or reopened,“ he said. — Bernama
