Mangrove swamps in Sabah, which comprise 60 percent of the total in Malaysia, are dying in patches.

NONE Illegal immigrants are stripping the barks of the Ceriops Tagal trees - commonly known as Tengar - and carting them away to neighbouring countries, according to the Sabah Forestry Department (SFD).

"We have discovered this through through aerial surveys," said SFD director Sam Mannan ( right ).

Mannan was speaking at a Q&A session at the National Seminar on Coastline Forest Conservation 2010 held yesterday at the 1Borneo megamall in Kota Kinabalu.

The surveys have established that the illegal immigrants need only an hour or less to strip the bark in the mangrove swamps, pile them into tiny boats, move downstream to a waiting mother ship and return to nearby Philippine waters.

Each small boat can carry the barks of up to three Tengar trees.

"The only thing that we have been able to control so far is to ensure that the mother ships don't enter Sabah waters," said Mannan. "The mother ships wait just outside Sabah waters and it's difficult to tell them apart from other ships. Our aerial surveillance deter them from entering Sabah waters."

The SFD works together with the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) which has its own surveillance programme in Sabah waters.

A recent MMEA operation, for example, netted over a hundred illegal immigrants and destroyed countless boats, big and small.

The police have also been urged to chip in and do their bit since the illegal immigrants are "armed and dangerous", disclosed Mannan. "In fact, the Sabah Commissioner of Police did mention this about two or three years ago."

NONE He confirmed that previously such raids by illegal immigrants on the mangrove swamps mainly occurred around Jambongan Island north of Beluran, near Sandakan along the east coast.

The activities have since fanned out into other tracts of mangrove swamps around Banggi Island and elsewhere.

Huge demand in HK and the Philippines

The SFD, according to Mannan, is experiencing wave after wave of people - 99 per cent illegal immigrants - making for the mangrove swamps.

This follows the huge demand in Hong Kong and the Philippines for the bark. It can be used to make alcohol and other drinks.

Previously, the tannin and resin content of the bark were used just to cure leather and had been traded for well over a hundred years.

Mannan concedes that it won't be easy to deal with the mangrove plunderers. In fact the illegal immigrants were quite happy to be caught and put in jail where they are looked after very well, fed properly and given medical attention. "When they are released after a year they go back to what they were doing before."

The SFD director was quick to add that the activities of the illegal immigrants in the mangroves swamps would not entirely strip the state of the valuable assets.

"Ecologically, we can survive these raids but they are bad," said Mannan. "Why should we tolerate them when our own people don't do it?"

NONE The SFD, disclosed Mannan, has also detected a thousand hectares of mangrove swamps in Kunak and Semporna, along the east coast, which have been taken over for the illegal planting of oil palm.

The SFD is currently focusing on taking over the area. It needs an estimated five years to restore the area to its original state.

"When you develop an oil palm plantation, you have to do excavations, and make drains to stop the seawater from coming in," said Mannan. "The mangroves will not have a chance to regenerate unlike cases of illegal felling."

Sabah has a total of 326,487.12ha of mangrove forest reserve. Coastal forests are an important ecosystem that is the habitat of various flora and fauna.

It also acts as a natural barrier against waves and strong winds and prevents coastal erosion as well as being a filtering system for pollutants from rivers. The mangrove swamp forest is also an important asset to the local tourism industry.

The SFD has been focusing on replacement replanting in identified areas. Most of the areas replanted had been encroached or reclaimed for acquaculture activities and oil palm plantations. In the last four years, the SFD has rehabilitated 735.56ha.