Has it ever crossed your mind how many people in Sabah depend for their living on Sabah’s environmental tourism?

People working in the airline, hotel, taxi, restaurant, tour guides, tourism companies, NGOs, scientists, among many others can all put food on their family tables each day thanks in the main to orangutans. These animals are national icons of Sabah and used by the government to attract tourists from all over the world.

Admittedly, a lot of people also visit Sabah to go diving and see other wildlife spectacles’. But, let’s face it orangutans are the main attraction. Thousands of people are wholly dependent on these animals.

There’s no question - wildlife more than earns it’s keep in Sabah. Now let’s see what in return has Sabah done for its wildlife and environment?

Countless thousands of hectares of rainforest, home to a myriad of wildlife species, have been destroyed by the palm oil industry. In the process of this happening thousands of orangutans alone have been murdered and yet not a single person has ever been prosecuted.

The rhino is going extinct. Turtles are being skinned alive. Elephants poisoned and shot. Pangolins poached in their thousands for sale mostly to China. Bushmeat is openly but illegally for sale in markets. The catalogue of wildlife exploitation in Sabah is almost endless.

In return for giving jobs to hundreds if not thousands of its citizens the government of Sabah, namely the Sabah Wildlife Department, treats its wildlife with undisguised disdain. Rarely, if ever, is anyone arrested, let alone prosecuted.

It’s scandalous and been going from bad to worse under the present regime. You know who these people are, don’t you? They are the ones who fail to protect wildlife, fail to enforce the law, and in doing so put the jobs and livelihoods of a great many people at risk.

Are you going to sit back and accept this or, are you going to do something about it? Yes, you. If to make a living you depend on tourism, your future is in your hands.

SEAN WHYTE is CEO, Nature Alert.