Forest Management Plan - Sabah Forestry Department

In FMU 17A, appropriate land tenure policies, monitoring, and regulations are already inplace. Environmental protection, however, is yet to be implemented strictly withoutcompromising environmental values. Protection against encroachment from the localcommunities will be doubled up. Since forests provide substantial public-good services,this would imply that a high degree of stakeholders’ involvement is both inevitable anddesirable. However, in view of the overall resource constraints facing the SFD, closecollaboration with other stakeholders, particularly the local communities toward forestprotection against encroachment and the threats from fire and illegal logging, will becrucial (Procedure 12).8.8.4 Fire ProtectionThe SFD has formal procedures for resource protection that include fire management(Procedure 8 – Resource Protection). Fire risk is being monitored based on the KeetchByram Dryness Indes (Fig 2.1).A Forest Fire Management Plan has been developed in DFR. A similar plan will bedeveloped for FMU 17A by 2010. The plan will be designed to protect the forest fromfires, which may occur due to land clearing by the local communities and/or by the oilpalm areas adjacent to FMU 17A. Amongst others, the plan will specify the following:• Fire Management Map with a scale 1: 50,000;• Fire Prevention Plan;• Fire Preparedness Plan;• Fire Management Zones - access routes by vehicle, road and track network;• Location of existing water points;• Equipment resources statement and specifications for procurement of newequipment; and• Fire Management OrganizationGreater focus will be placed on adopting preventive measures to mitigate negativeenvironmental effects at the source. Steps to foster closer cooperation and coordinationbetween contractors & local communities in addressing the environmental concernsarising from forestry activities will be given emphasis. Environmental auditing will beincreasingly applied in evaluating and mitigating the socio-economic and environmentalimpacts caused by the forestry activities. In addition, capacity development programswill be undertaken to generate more trained human resources in environmental andnatural resource management in FMU 17A. Research and development activities will beintensified with the cooperation of FRC and research institutes and NGOs to furthersupport environmental management.69