03 July, 2005 Sabah Daily Express - Kota Kinabalu: Oil palmplantations in Sabah are more aware of environmentally sustainablepractices and are doing their part in rehabilitating forests in the lowerKinabatangan area, said a WWF Malaysia official.

WWF Partners for Wetlands Programme Malaysia project manager Darrel Webbersaid more plantation owners have been working with them on reforestationin a bid to link isolated patches of riverine forest to the KinabatanganWildlife Sanctuary.

"We are confident that more Malaysian oil palm plantations may contributeto conservation-development balance in Sabah, which has the largest areaof oil palm plantations (in the country)," he said in a statement,Saturday.

"Since 1998, WWF-Malaysia's Partners for Wetlands Programme has been inactive collaboration with private oil palm plantations and StateGovernment agencies to restore degraded forests in the lower Kinabatangan.

"It is the primary objective of the programme to establish a wildlifecorridor called the 'Corridor of Life' which allows the movement ofwildlife, especially elephants and orang-utans.

"To date three companies - Pontian United Plantations Bhd, AsiaticDevelopment Bhd and Borneo Samudera Sdn Bhd - have signed a Memorandum ofUnderstanding (MoU) with WWF Malaysia to rehabilitate over 1,200 hectaresof riparian forest, contributing to the restoration of the 'Corridor ofLife'.

"The goodwill of these oil palm plantations to set aside land for forestrestoration is also in line with the recent call by Chief Minister DatukSeri Musa Aman for oil palm plantations in Sabah to set aside at leastfive per cent of their total area for replanting trees.

On June 26, the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest(CSPI) initiated an anti-palm oil campaign in the United States claimingthat forests in Malaysia were being destroyed and replaced by oil palmplantations, depriving wildlife of their natural habitat.

The CSPI's report "Cruel Oil: How Palm Oil Harms Health, Rainforest &Wildlife" was used in the campaign launched on the Internet and to lobbyconsumer groups, urging manufacturers to reduce use of palm oil and toobtain it from environmentally sustainable sources.