9/10/06 (Daily Express News)  -  Sandakan: A village has succeeded in protecting its oil palm crop and cemetery from damage by wild elephants by erecting an electrified fence.

The low-voltage fence was built by the villagers through gotong-royong in 2004 to keep a herd of about 150 Borneo Pygmy elephants out of 48 hectares of oil palm.

The success prompted the villagers to put up a similar fence around their one-hectare cemetery last month.

Sahdin Lias, the Managing Director of Red Ape Encounters and Adventures Sdn Bhd (RAE), a eco-tourism company managed by the villagers, said the fence for the oil palm area was built with the assistance of the Kinabatangan Orang Utan Conservation Project and the Sabah Wildlife Department.

RAE provided the aid to put up the fence at the cemetery, he said.

Sahdin, who lives in Kampung Sukau, denied an allegation by Kinabatangan Member of Parliament Datuk Bung Moktar Radin that the electrified fence had provoked the elephants and made them aggressive.

He said the elephants were behaving more aggressively because their movements in the Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary were disrupted by the establishment of more oil palm plantations and human settlements in the area.- Bernama