RM50,000 reward for info leading to prosecution of elephant poacher

The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has offered a reward of RM50,000 for information leading to the capture and prosecution of perpetrators involved in the second elephant killing on the east coast of Sabah. -- NSTP Archive

By Olivia Miwil - October 22, 2019 @ 5:19pm

KOTA KINABALU: The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil has offered a reward of RM50,000 for information leading to the capture and prosecution of perpetrators involved in the second elephant killing on the east coast of Sabah.

RSPO chief executive officer Datuk Darrel Webber said the reward, which would be managed by the Sabah Wildlife Department, was a small gesture to aid the authorities in the capture of the culprit.

The second elephant without tusks was discovered by plantation workers last weekend, less than a month after another elephant was shot more than 70 times in Tawau on Sept 23.

“RSPO and Sabah Wildlife Department call for action as brutal act marks second elephant killing this month.

“These recent killings are symptoms of a larger problem — a problem that will only grow if we, collectively, do not intervene,” he said in a statement.

Webber, who has been involved in conservation work in Sabah, said elephant ranges and migration paths had been severely impacted by development, which had led to a steady increase in human and elephant conflict.

He added that the elephant poaching for tusks was also on the rise.

“To tackle these two issues there will need to be a holistic approach, backed by local stakeholders and with appropriate resources.

“It is not a solution to continue addressing the issue of elephant range and migration bottlenecks simply by addressing the symptoms on an ad hoc basis.

“There is also an urgent need to manage the elephant population of Sabah, which includes understanding their population size, growth, and looking at the landscape of Sabah on how to accommodate them,” Webber added.

He said that balancing the needs of a large species that moved over great areas, against the needs of the local human population would be a challenging and thorny issue.

Webber said RSPO hoped that the current initiative by the Sabah Government, industry, and civil society to address the sustainability of the palm oil sector at a jurisdictional level, could contribute towards a holistic approach in managing the elephant population in Sabah.