‘Sweetest’: Women reclaiming the jungle of Borneo New Galleries

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Kinabatangan River, Malaysia – On the floodplain of the brown-brown river Kinabatangan in Sabah, Borneo, local women’s groups have been working for more than a decade to restore the degraded forest in the area.
They hope to create a forest “corridor” in one of Malaysia’s largest biodiversity areas, under pressure for years as a result of the continued expansion of oil palm plantations.
Sabah produced nearly two million tonnes of crude palm oil in the first six months of this year, the largest in any Malaysian state, making it the world’s second-largest exporter of goods from soaps to detergents and ice cream.
The expansion of the industry has led to deforestation, leading to the fragmentation of forests, accumulating and isolating wildlife, including special pygmy elephants and orangutans from Borneo, in increasingly smaller areas.
Women’s reforestation groups plant native trees on strategically selected plots with the aim of connecting several wildlife sanctuaries located around the town of Sukau.
“We need to contribute to the conservation of wildlife because the forest below Kinabatanga is too small, we need to plant more to provide habitat and food for the almost extinct wildlife species,” said Mariana Singgong, who heads one. between the two reforestation groups. “We are caring for the flora and fauna for future generations.”
Since the reforestation program began in 2008 under the auspices of HUTAN, a local wildlife and forest conservation NGO, women have planted and fed 101 acres (250 acres) of forest, roughly the equivalent of one-third of New York’s Central Park area.
Their main goal is not to plant a large number of trees, but to ensure the survival of the trees in an environment where young trees, shrubs, ferns and vines are at risk of drowning.
The teams spend at least three-quarters of their time maintaining the plots, and their dedication has ensured that more than 80 percent of the trees survive.
Quality maintenance and growth needs HUTAN focused its entire forest reforestation program on women’s groups, which is unique to the rural area of Sabah, where women are primarily seen as responsible for the home.
“Men are very good at doing certain types of work, planting trees, but when we repeatedly ask them to return to the same plot, they can’t pay the same attention to the plant every time, as women can do,” said Marc Ancrenaz, HUTAN’s founder. “Women are much better at feeding these trees in the long run.”
This year’s restoration work severely damaged the pandemic as women were unable to visit the sites with the same consistency for months in Malaysia under restrictions on COVID-19 movements.
When they were finally able to return, they were disappointed with what they found.
“We saw that many of the trees were in trouble, some were dying, we were sorry to see that they were not growing very well. Mostly newly planted, they are sensitive, without three months of maintenance and can die, ”Norinah Braim, another head of the reforestation team, told Al Jazeera.
The women aimed to plant 5,000 trees this year. So far they have only managed 1,770, but they have not shied away.
“Normally we would achieve our goal by October, but there were a lot of delays as a result of the blockade,” Norinah said. “We’re sure we’ll achieve our goal by the end of the year, we’ll work hard for that. The power of women! ”
It was the reforestation work of HUTAN and the women’s group highlighted Al Jazeera’s Earthrise program in 2012.
This story was produced with the support of the Rainforest Journalism Fund, in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center.
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