KUCHING: A total of between RM5 million and RM10 million may be allocated by the state government to the Sarawak Forestry Department for its Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) programme to be implemented in May this year.
“We will try to involve the communities throughout the state to collect the local species’ seedlings and will get them as workers at the nurseries in Kuching, Sibu, Niah and Lawas later on,” said the department director Hamden Mohammad after the launch of the department’s new logo in conjunction with its 100th anniversary.
Commenting on the revocation of forest timber licences, he said it is the state government’s intention to reduce the forest-harvesting rates in order to make the state become greener for the next 100 years.
“Keeping forest alive is our mission; in this regard, one of our efforts is to revoke the existing forest timber licences in Sarawak.
“Of the 468 forest timber licences, 282 licences have been revoked. This revocation has been done by stages since 2014.
“Our intention is to make the licensees, especially the long-term forest timber licence holders to obtain certifications from any of the equivalent certified schemes such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
“This will ensure that these licensees are able to comply with more systematic timber practices and are able to minimise the effects on the environment,” Hamden explained.
According to him, there are 300 verifiers to be evaluated by the third party auditors – the licensee must pass all of them to get the certification.
He added, so far, the state has six certified Forest Management Units (FMUs) which cover more than half a million hectares of natural forest areas.
“With the reduction of the licensees, we have made restoration work in degraded areas due to over-harvesting. We will replant our local species such as kapur, keruing, meranti, belian, selangan batu, engkabang jantung and
others,” he added.
