On the one hand, the state government of Sarawak is ever ready to tout its alleged green credentials and green agenda these days. Each initiative is now couched as “eco-friendly”: preserving “biodiversity” as the key to future scientific prosperity is recognised as paramount.

Yet, on the other hand, the truth of the situation is that less than 10% of the allegedly forested land bank in the state remains natural and undisturbed forest and these vanishing areas are still under attack.

To disguise the situation, the official statistics class fast-grow mono-culture (Acacia) plantations and solid square miles of oil palm agri-business production as ‘forest cover’ in order to present a mirage of a healthy natural state.

Such areas are drenched in chemical fertilisers and pesticides designed to kill off everything bordering on biodiversity and careless exploitation is rapidly killing the soil.

This is a con that was indulged in by the Taib regime for decades and there is very little time left to rescue the situation and preserve at least some of the desperately endangered natural heritage of Borneo in an era of climate change and dwindling scientific resources.

It is madness not to do so and every square mile of natural forest and its vital DNA is vital to the process.

Sarawak Report therefore urges the man in charge, Abang Jo, to seize an opportunity on his doorstep, which is to restore an area of forest reserve that was corruptly appropriated by the Taib family just outside Kuching and is now being touted for development.

The Taib’s have already sold some 100 acres of that once protected forest, originally awarded by the state at no registered cost for ‘agriculture’, to a housing project for a huge private profit. They are now trying to flog off the rest to make even more money for themselves at the expense of the Semenggoh Forest Reserve and Orang Utan sanctuary which should never have lost this land in the first place.

This is a glaring opportunity for the state to intervene to protect a vital area of biodiversity from greedy exploitation before it is too late.

The Taib Raid On Semenggoh

Carefully protected decades ago in the area around the Charles Brooke Memorial Hospital, the Semenggoh Forest Reserve is a vital remaining area of bio-diversity near Kutching.  It hosts the Orang Utan Sanctuary and Sarawak’s much vaunted Biodiversity Centre is adjacent.

However, on taking power, Taib soon laid hands on the area as part of the huge alienation of public lands into entities controlled by his own family.

In September 1984 a 256 hectare chunk of the priceless forest reserve, categorised as land Lot 566,  was first acquired by the so-called Land Custody and Development Authority (LCDA) which Taib as chief minister created and chaired. It was passed to the management of the state-owned Pelita Holdings having been re-classed as land designated for oil palm plantation (Oil).

Land records obtained by Sarawak Report show how three years later, in November 1987, the area was then simply “transferred” into the ownership of Lanco Plantations, a company owned by Taib’s favoured younger brother Arip Mahmud which, as Sarawak Report has already reported, received huge tracts of land all over Sarawak.

There is no record of any payment or excuse for this removal of precious virgin forest into private hands of the brother of the chief minister for (yet another) oil palm plantation.

In fact, Arip did nothing much with the land. He had made millions selling on other huge concessions for logging and plantation.  A small cocoa farmstead was installed to show ‘agricultural purpose’ locals have told Sarawak Report.

Arip died in 2005 of lung cancer (the downside of having been favoured with the sole importation/distribution rights for foreign cigarettes) and the valuable Lanco Plantation holdings were then brought under the aegis of a Taib family company named Mesti Bersatu designed to provide for Arip’s string of 3 wives and their offspring, all beneficiaries of Taib’s looting of the state.

A key shareholder of Mesti Bersatu was Taib himself, as reported by this website, now the wives and offspring are the main concerned shareholders.

It was in 2016 that these Taib family beneficiaries first moved to take advantage of this particular asset, selling some 100 acres of the virgin forest to the Kuching construction group Sri Datai which proceeded to build 900 homes on the former forest reserve under the government Prima1 scheme.

That influx of human housing will, inevitably, already have negatively impacted the delicate eco-system of the adjacent once protected forest.

Now, Sarawak Report has learned that Arip’s wives have been touting their interest around Kuching in seeking another major buyer for the remaining 5/6ths – some 550 remaining acres – of this crucial virgin forest thieved from the state.

Given the Arip family are making it plain they want to maximise profit from the sale of this area just 20 minutes drive from Kuching, the plan is clearly to again transform what remains of this “agricultural” plot into housing, with inevitable dire consequences for this area of alleged remaining green biodiversity.

If the state government were to grant such a conversion of status, as the would be sellers appear to assume it will, the area is calculated by certain local business interests as being worth between RM500-800k per acre.  That would net up to half a billion ringgit for the total site.

The Arip family are far from destitute. Indeed, to the contrary all the Taibs are dripping in benefits provided by the former Governor, who left numerous indigenous communities and the rightful owners of native lands that were confiscated on behalf of such cronies deeply impoverished.

Their wealth was purloined through a massive abuse of power and little so far has been done to rectify that criminal injustice.

However, there is now a tiny window open to rescue some of Sarawak’s legendary bio-diversity, a key to the future prosperity of the state by preventing this sale from taking place.

That is in keeping with the present state government own stated priorities and presents an opportunity to prove the administration now puts the national interest and green agenda above the interest of privileged political families.

This virgin forest land, which was singled out and protected for its special scientific significance way back during the supposedly rapacious colonial era, should be re-claimed for the people and nature of Sarawak, not chopped down to make one family (who did nothing to earn the title) richer still.