05/10/2008 (Mongabay) - Indigenous forest dwellers in Sarawak, in the Malaysian part of Borneo, have rejected a proposal to turn 80,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of the land into an oil palm plantation, reports the Malaysian Star.

In a two-hour meeting Saturday in the city of Miri, representatives from the Berawan-Tering ethnic group officially rejected an overture to turn their land over to a private firm for oil palm development. About 90 percent of community members opposed the deal which would have given the oil palm a 60-year concession to their land, according to former Baram District Councillor Philip Ube, who represented the native.

“We are also worried that if we give up our land, we will lose our food resources and, once the land is turned into an oil-palm plantation, the social structure will be changed,” Ube said at a press conference, adding that while the company had offered community members jobs as plantation workers, "we don't want to end up as laborers on our own ancestral land."