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Fisherman Marsin Mardin (left) shaking hands with HUTAN Director Dr. Isabelle Lackman-Ancrenaz and receives the material for making the plastic fish traps from Kinabatangan District Officer Abdul Latiff Kandok.
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4th August, 2008
KINABATANGAN: Two more villages within the Lower Kinabatangan have adopted an environmentally friendly fishing method which directly helps to protect the forest within the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary.
The method which employs the use of plastic wire mesh instead of using the bark of trees found within the protected forest has been winning over fishermen village by village since it was launched by the Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project (KOCP) in 2004.
“It would take us a week to make one traditional bubuh (fish trap) as we would first have to walk a day or two into the forest to get the material from the trees,” explained Kampung Sangau village head, Damsi bin Sabtu.
Using the plastic alternative to make the fish traps only takes a few hours compared to a few days when making them out of woody materials.
“Everyone in this village is interested, look even the women are trying their hand at making this new type of fish traps,” said Damsi who was thankful to KOCP for providing loans to three fishermen from his village of Kampung Sangau and Kampung Lokan.
The method which was designed and first launched in Kampung Sukau in 2004, was fueled by the need to address an environmental issue as fishermen had to go into the forest to extract the material for their fish traps.
“This had to stop as we need to protect the forest and conservation is a search of other environmentally friendly alternatives,” said organising chairperson of the programme, Johry bin Haji Bakri of KOCP.
KOCP which was jointly established by the Sabah Wildlife Department and French Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) HUTAN, provided the expertise and loans to the fishermen to cover the cost of materials needed to make the plastic wire mesh fish traps.
Also attending the launching of the event was Kinabatangan District Officer, Abdul Latiff Kandok and HUTAN Director, Dr. Isabelle Lackman-Ancrenaz.
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