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12th June, 2008
KOTA KINABALU: A seminar on Ecosystem Health Monitoring in Wildlife Tourism Areas was held at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park.
The workshop on Tuesday was sponsored by the Sabah Wildlife Department and Indiana University, USA.
Around 50 participants attended the seminar, including members from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Sabah Wildlife Department, Department of Veterinary Services, Ministry of Health, University Malaysia Sabah, Sabah Tourism Board, Sabah Parks, State Environment Protection Department, Forestry Department, Sabah Foundation, WWF-Malaysia, Borneo Conservation Trust, UK Orangutan Appeal, and Hutan.
The focus of the seminar was to discuss the importance of health monitoring of human-wildlife interactions in Sabah, Malaysia, an understanding of which will function to ensure the sustainability and growth of ecotourism as well as human and animal health.
Professor Michael Muehlenbein from Indiana University, USA, provided an informative lecture on responsible ecotourism, with particular reference to prevention measures to minimize negative impacts on animal populations.
Ecotourism functions to facilitate awareness of cultural and natural histories in diverse environments, creating financial benefits to those local populations which invest in conservation of their cultural and natural histories.
Such nature-based tourism can certainly serve as an important potential tool to assist conservation efforts in preserving populations of wildlife, particularly primates.
A natural consequence of expanding tourism at wildlife sanctuaries is increased human-wildlife contact, which must be properly managed in order to prevent infection transmission between these groups.
Tourists must better understand the risks they may pose to wildlife health by visiting these sanctuaries while either ill or unvaccinated for important diseases. Specific prevention measures were discussed to minimize these risks to wildlife in Sabah.
Professor Muehlenbein also described the “Sabah Ecosystem Health Project,” a proposed collaboration designed to better understand risk of infection transmission between humans, wildlife, and livestock in Sabah.
Despite the presence of known infectious diseases within cohabitating human, wildlife, livestock, and domestic pet populations throughout the world, and the emergence of novel infectious diseases in ecological hotspots where human-wildlife contact is substantial, very few surveillance programs exist to specifically describe and monitor the risks of human-animal infection transmission.
Humans (tourists and local populations), wildlife (orang-utans, macaques, small mammals, birds and bats), domestic dogs and cats, and livestock will be sampled to determine the distribution of various infectious diseases, and prevention strategies will be developed.
Implementation of this project will take several years, and will begin with sampling in and around the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, Kabili-Sepilok Virgin Jungle Reserve and Tabin Wildlife Reserve.
“Information on transmission risk is needed in Sabah, and such data are absolutely necessary in order to ensure the long-term survival of our wildlife and those animals of particular importance for ecotourism.
Professor Muehlenbein’s project will provide the international community with a outstanding example on how to properly manage healthy human-animal relations,” said Laurentius Ambu, Director of the Sabah Wildlife Department.
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