Hornbills are totally protected under the Wild Life Protection Ordinance 1998. If found guilty, any person can be imprisoned for two years and fined RM25,000. To protect the bird’s habitat, the Sarawak Forestry Corporation has been establishing protected areas in Sarawak, such as national parks, nature reserves, and wildlife sanctuaries. They also actively involve villagers or longhouse communities in conservation projects.
Saving the Majestic Bird
This is the last of a three-part series on hornbills in Sarawak.
In Sarawak, these birds are totally protected under the Wild Life Protection Ordinance 1998.
According to Section 29, any person who hunts, kills, captures, sells, offers for sale or claims to be offering for sale, imports, exports, or is in possession of any totally protected animal or any recognisable part or derivative thereof, or any nest thereof, except in accordance with the permission in writing of the Controller for scientific or educational purposes or for the protection and conservation of such totally protected animal, shall be guilty of an offence.
If found guilty, the person can be imprisoned for two years and fined RM25,000.
To protect the bird’s habitat, the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) has been establishing or announcing protected areas in Sarawak, such as national parks, nature reserves, and wildlife sanctuaries.
They also actively involve villagers or longhouse communities in conservation projects such as the Sarawak Hornbill Conservation Project at the Lanjak Entimau Wildlife Sanctuary.
In addition, SFC also organised awareness programmes for the public about the importance of hornbills through lectures, conferences, and webinars, besides being invited as speakers for webinars related to biodiversity conservation, including the National Hornbill Conference in 2015, the International Hornbill Conference (2017), the Hornbills of Sarawak Webinar (2021), and the Webinar NCTF 2.0 Conservation of Fauna – Sarawak Hornbill Conservation Project (2023).
In order to prevent and reduce illegal hunting of hornbills, the corporation carried out monitoring and enforcement in fully protected areas, especially in national parks bordering neighbouring countries, and involved local residents in the fight against illegal hunting.
SFC also works with locals to raise awareness of the importance of hornbill conservation and convey the message about the negative impact of poaching on biodiversity and tourism.
For this, Honorary Wild Life Rangers have also been appointed to help SFC enforcement officers be the eyes and ears to channel information related to wildlife crime in their respective areas.
To further strengthen the conservation efforts, SFC has also launched the Reduce Demand Campaign through media, social platforms, and community events to raise awareness not only of the hornbill trade but of all protected wildlife in Sarawak.
Engagement activities
In her study, Wildlife and Habitat Conservation Officer of WWF-Malaysia Philovenny Pengiran noted that most of her respondents believed that there was a need to increase the level of public involvement in making hornbill protection effective.
She added that some of her respondents also believed that there should be more engagement activities organised by relevant authorities, such as public talks or radio announcements.
This suggests that an increase in awareness programmes could facilitate an increase in local knowledge about the ecological importance of hornbills in tropical rainforests.
The introduction of additional awareness, education, and outreach programmes related to the protection and conservation status of hornbills provided by the relevant authorities would be a significant step in the right direction.
Elaborating, she added that education was the most influential variable in the respondents’ answers. Incorporation of educational postings on social media platforms could therefore be very effective in spreading conservation messages, especially to people in the younger age groups.
An example of the successful use of such methods can be seen in the work of Rangkong Indonesia, a research unit under the Rekam Nusantara Foundation. The team has set up multiple social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to engage with members of the public and directly convey conservation messages about hornbills in Indonesia.
Examples of their educational social media posts include quizzes, infographics, and conservation news about hornbills. It is highly recommended that the relevant authorities involved in hornbill conservation in Sarawak emulate Rangkong Indonesia’s steps to further enhance conservation efforts for hornbills in Sarawak.
In spite of the celebrated status of hornbills in Sarawak, there is a serious lack of information on the perception and beliefs of people towards these birds and limited research on ecological aspects of hornbills in Sarawak, said Philovenny.
Recommendations
According to Dr Victor Luna Amin from the Ministry of Tourism, Creative Industry, and Performing Arts, there is a need to implement intervention programmes, such as by conducting a regular and progressive awareness programme to all affected communities, looking into alternative sources of supply of materials for traditional costumes (such as the use of the feathers of a domestic bird such as a turkey or bleached white then painted with a black band), and most importantly, by conducting research to understand the people’s salient beliefs towards hornbills.
In addition, he noted that the management of the remaining potential habitats for hornbill conservation, especially the existing totally protected areas (which include national parks, nature reserves, and wildlife sanctuaries) in the state, should continue to embark on not only a survey of the species therein but also an inventory of the number of prominent mature breeding tree species, such as the Dipterocarp species and trees from the Myrtacea family, as shown by the successful research findings by Poonswad et al., (2013).
“There is also a need to replicate, probably with modification, the success story of Thailand’s initiation of the Community-Based Hornbill Conservation Model and the Hornbill Family Adoption Programme at Bodo Sungai Padi National Park,” he said.
Based on the results of her study, Philovenny said there is a need for the relevant conservation agencies in Sarawak to implement effective conservation awareness dissemination through social media platforms, increase ecological and socio-cultural research on hornbills in Sarawak for future reference, embed the fundamentals of conservation into the mainstream education system, and establish improved hornbill data collection in Sarawak by involving local communities.
“The use of social media platforms in broadcasting conservation awareness for hornbills should effectively reach out to audiences from a wide range of backgrounds.
“Research on the ecology of hornbills and socio-cultural information is lacking in Sarawak, especially research that involves collaboration with local communities,” she said.
Although Sarawak is known as the Land of the Hornbills, studies on hornbill distribution and conservation in the state are limited.
Meanwhile, the MNS stated that since several timber companies in Sarawak have conservation officers, it is possible to approach them for data on hornbill sightings in Forest Management Units (FMUs).
However, more hornbill-centric actions need to be undertaken in FMUs. Of key importance is conducting surveys within the FMUs in the future to ascertain the population status and distributions of hornbills in these forest administration units.
Come, Sarawakians, let’s together do our part to conserve and safeguard our hornbills so that future generations will have the opportunity to observe these enigmatic birds too. We should be proud to be known as Bumi Kenyalang, or the Land of the Hornbills.
Stop hunting hornbills, regardless of how precious they are, and let’s continue to educate people about how crucial these birds are to our biodiversity and tourism.
Let’s learn more about our hornbills as well, so that people won’t make fun of us for misusing them. Remember, Kenyalang is the Iban name for the Rhinoceros Hornbill, and other hornbills should be called enggang in Malay.
- I would like to thank the Sarawak Forestry Corporation, Philovenny Pengiran of the WWF-Malaysia, and Dr Victor Luna Amin from the Ministry of Tourism, Creative Industry, and Performing Arts for providing me with all the relevant information, without which this article would not have been possible.
