Rural communities in Sarawak are facing bleak days because recent floods destroyed their padi fields shortly before harvest time.

This alert was put out by Swiss-based NGO Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), which has close links with native groups in the Baram River region in northern Sarawak.

A spokesperson quoted a Feb 11 report in The Borneo Post that indigenous communities from a number of longhouses in Baram have lost almost their whole harvest.

“Only a couple of farmers who cultivated hill padi this year have survived the devastation. The rest saw the crops destroyed before their very eyes,” said the spokesperson, quoting a farmer from Long Ikan, one of the worst hit longhouses.

It is expected that the losses will make a number of communities dependent on government aid.

While local politicians blame changing climate patterns for the floods, over-logging appears to be a significant reason for the unprecedented devastation, the NGO claimed.

illegal deforestation logging penerokaan haram Despite warnings from environmentalists and international scientists, less than 10 percent of Sarawak's primary forests have been spared from logging, it said.

The BMF said that, for over two decades, forestry policies under Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud have “favoured depletion of the fragile tropical rainforest ecosystem, without due importance being attached to long-term environmental, social and economic consequences of logging”.

One outcome of human activity is that fish in Sarawak's rivers are dying due to siltation. Police officers from the Belaga district found hundreds of dead fish floating on the Rajang River, it added.

Sarawak Natural Resources and Environment Board controller Penguang Manggil said the gills of the fish were found to be blocked by silt.

Penguang said the siltation was caused by soil erosion due to human activities upstream and agreed that it would have long-term consequences on the quality of rivers and aquatic life.

“We would like to call on everyone to ensure that whatever we do, it will have a minimal impact on the rivers", he was quoted as saying in The Borneo Post .