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Ulu Segama Forest Reserve and the adjacent Malua Forest Reserve (together USM) comprise 240,000 hectares (592,800 acres) of heavily logged lowland dipterocarp forest along the Segama River in southeastern Sabah. Remarkably, although it is severely degraded, this area still contains a striking amount of biodiversity, including over 2,500 orang utans – almost a quarter of the total number of orang utans thought to remain in Sabah. USM is also important as a major water catchment area and a buffer and wildlife corridor for the Danum Valley Conservation Area (43,800 ha), a fully protected area of pristine primary lowland forest, the only of its kind in Sabah.
Unfortunately, years of destructive logging practices, illegal cultivation and fires have reduced a considerable portion of USM’s forest to secondary vegetation, infested with vines and entirely devoid of trees in some areas. LEAP is working with the Sabah Forestry Department in an effort to maintain and protect the critical population of orang utans still located in USM after the most recent large-scale logging effort in 2006-07. These orang utans and other wildlife are threatened by a wholesale loss of food trees, as well as forest cover and canopy for movement, nesting and mating.
LEAP is focusing on a 12,000 acre area called North Ulu Segama, which is home to a population of 200-300 orangutans that are geographically isolated from the rest of USM by the Segama River. North Ulu Segama was particularly hard hit during the 2006-07 round of logging activities, leaving this population of orang utans highly vulnerable to starvation and with no place to go. There is a desperate need for immediate restoration. LEAP is working to facilitate funding for the planting of native fast-growing food trees in this area to provide supplemental food for resident orang utans as well as to fill in gaps between isolated patches of trees, thus improving forest cover and providing bridges for movement between patches.
The North Ulu Segama restoration work includes purchasing appropriate seedlings, removing vines and preparing the site, planting seedlings, tending and monitoring the planted areas, and generating and compiling relevant data for future restoration activities in severely logged lowland forests. In addition to facilitating funding, LEAP is working to ensure that these activities involve participation of rural communities through both jobs and contract services, such as supplying seedlings, in order to provide direct monetary, training and conservation education benefits to the local people.
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