10/01/2012 (The Star) - Players in the palm oil industry are chipping in to help Sabah's Borneo pygmy elephants by providing the initial funding to start a sanctuary for the pachyderms.

The Borneo Elephant Wildlife Sanctuary will be a 2,000ha site in the east coast Kinabatangan district, said Plantation Industry and Commodities Minister Tan Sri Bernard Dompok.

The sanctuary would be able to accommodate about 20 elephants at any one time, although there are about 100 animals waiting to be rescued.

“BEWS aims to reduce potential human-elephant conflicts and create a controlled public access sanctuary to understand and care for these magnificent animals,” he said when opening a wildlife conference here yesterday.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Laurentius Ambu said the sanctuary was expected to be operational by mid-2012 with an initial RM5mil funding from the Malaysian Palm Oil Wildlife Conservation Fund.

Dompok added that a Japanese NGO was also contributing another RM1.5mil for the setting up of the sanctuary.