Sustainability
The beginning
The future
Beyond tourism, we aim to make a difference to the people, wildlife and land surrounding us by providing alternative livelihoods, engaging in respectful wildlife encounters and participating in habitat restoration initiatives.
Community engagement
Engaging the local community in ecotourism and offering an alternative livelihood to hunting, logging or unsustainable forms of farming is essential if we are to protect the forest around us. The majority of our staff are employed directly from the villages around us and, through working in ecotourism, they are able to support their families in a sustainable way. Our local guide training programme, enables aspiring nature guides to train alongside our experienced guides. It is our hope that this experience will help to foster a sense of pride for the surrounding local environment and a desire to be part of protecting it.
Forest Preservation
The Sabah state government gazetted the "Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary" in 1997 protecting a total of 26,000 Ha in the Lower Kinabatangan region. Further efforts by conservationists to extend this area to cover a broader part of the river have so far gone unanswered. Our goal over the coming years is to develop a Forest Preservation Fund which will be used to purchase or secure the lease of native forest that is otherwise prone to conversion into plantations. In addition to securing the future of the remaining forest, we will implement a reforestation program aimed at restoring vital areas of degraded forest and provide a better habitat for the area's wildlife.
Wildlife monitoring
Our experienced guides conduct wildlife monitoring on every cruise and nature walk, recording sightings of orang-utans, langurs, hornbills and more to help us build a clearer picture of seasonal changes, behaviour patterns and newcomers around the lodge.
