Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
However, Malaysian and international watchdogs claim the whole project - including
contracts to clear the site of biomass, which involves logging old-growth jungle - has
been shot through with corrupt dealings designed to benefit the business associates of loc-
al politicians. Transparency International (
www.transparency.cz/doc/ti_gcr_2005_1.pdf
)
has declared the dam a 'monument of corruption.'
The power that the dam will produce exceeds the island's energy requirements; the ori-
ginal plan was to send 70% of the energy to Peninsular Malaysia along a 670km undersea
cable. That part of the project has been shelved, however, leaving Sarawak with an over-
capacity (when all turbines are operating, the dam will produce 2.5 times as many watts as
Sarawak's current peak demand).
Despite this, a dozen more dams in highland Sarawak are in various stages of planning
and execution, including the 944MW Murum Dam, located in a Penan area 60km upriver
from Bakun.
HEART OF BORNEO
An initiative of the WWF (
www.panda.org
)
, Heart of Borneo has a hugely ambitious goal: to safeguard Borneo's
biodiversity for future generations and to ensure indigenous peoples' cultural survival, by protecting 240,000 sq
km of interconnected forest land in Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei and Kalimantan. That's almost a third of the island's
land area.
Since Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei signed the Heart of Borneo Declaration in 2007, well over 100 new spe-
cies have been discovered in the area it covers, including a 57cm-long stick insect, the world's longest.
Wildlife Trade
Although theoretically illegal, the hugely lucrative trade in wild animals continues. Baby
orangutans are captured for sale as pets, sun bears are butchered so body parts such as gall
bladders can be used in traditional Chinese medicine, and clouded leopards are killed for
their teeth, bones and pelts.
A baby orangutan can be worth US$50,000 in Taiwan, Japan or the Middle East;
poachers in Kalimantan, though, are usually paid just US$100, so the profits from smug-
gling can be enormous. For every baby orangutan taken into captivity, it's estimated that
up to five orangutans are killed, including the baby's mother. Captive orangutans are cute
until they're about five years old, at which point they stop being cuddly and start becom-
ing dangerous - and are usually killed. The orangutans that live in rehabilitation centres,
