A timely reminder of climate change in Lok Kawi Park, Sabah

A timely reminder of climate change in Lok Kawi Park, Sabah

Better things for animals at Lok Kawi Park (LKP) Sabah (DE 31 Oct 2018) are both encouraging and in appreciation of wildlife in enclosed area for the public to view them in close by scenario, while those in the wild are out of reach for most people except the bad news of helpless dead animals in the newspapers.

But wildlife is best maintained in the wilderness for all animals and needless to say that.  

Leading biologists in an editorial in the journal Science recently said that if we want to avoid mass extinctions and preserve the ecosystems all plants and animals depend on, governments should protect a third of the oceans and land by 2030 and half by 2050, with a focus on areas of high biodiversity.

It’s not just about saving wildlife, says Jonathan Baillie of the National Geographic Society, one of the authors. It’s also about saving ourselves.

Of course LKP has nothing to compare in term of size and natural environment for the animals in captivity.

If you go to the Internet, there are various websites where foreigners and local do have many mixed comments which should be heeded and acted upon with best interests wherever and whenever possible. 

We should be always mindful of the rising temperature even in Sabah in the climate change scenario. But how to mitigate the damages of rising temperature when such animals were in the wild freely moving to cool and suitable cover. 

But in the zoo like LKP, such privilege is absent.  So caretakers should always on the lookout as how the animals feel in the rising temperature to stay comfortable and even to be active and alive. So how do we to maintain the welfare of such animals in captivity?

Gelugob, one of only 10 Sumatran rhinoceros in captivity worldwide, died on Jan 11, 2014 at the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park.

Sabah Wildlife Department veterinarian Dr Rosa Sipangkui said Gelugob’s age was about 37 years. There were probably less that 150 Sumatran rhinos left in the wild today, in Sumatra and Borneo, he said. 

Sipangkui said Gelugob’s health had deteriorated rapidly since early January and it had refused to drink and ate little. 

Nobody seems to know why this Rhino died in captivity.  I strongly believe it died from heat of rising temperature especially in the big mud pond without any good shade.  I did visit the zoo and noticed that the Rhino was half body in the open pond without moving.  Obviously, it was the heat of the muddy water that prevented the big animal to be active.

I had been to a local fish pond where the fish breeders were complaining that the fishes were not growing in size for months (waiting to die then) and my visiting friend took a temperature gauge to measure the water and found it of excessive heat especially around midday as the fish pond was without trees and shade. 

Like the Gelugob’s case, did anyone of the caretakers take the effort to measure the daily temperature of the muddy water, the normal habitat for that animal?  So caretakers should be observant of the behaviour of all animals at all times. Animals cannot talk but their body languages are powerful to convey messages and the caretakers must learn how to sense these animals in their behaviour especially in worsening climate change with no exception for Sabah.

I do take care of many dogs at home and observe all the time how such domestic animals behave in heat and raining period.  They would be stressed when the midday sun is very hot and would try to go under any shade available.  When rain comes, I would call that dogs suffer from rain-phobia namely avoiding rain at all cost even after the rain is gone as observed.  

It is a normal thing in many houses that pets especially dogs are kept in short lease, small and heated cage where the environment is without any tree to provide for shade.  Animal cannot drink heated water in open spaces.  You expect the animals to survive for long and not to succumb to heat. Some call it cruelty to animals but how ignorant or even guilty can the owners of such pets be so inhumane?

So I hope better things at LKP would do justice for the animals for the public to enjoy and support from the public with good inputs for consideration.

Imagine we need to maintain wildlife in the wilderness in a third of the earth to save ourselves, and certainly Sabah in Borneo has a special role to maintain wildlife in better scenario especially when wildlife is dwindling fast in the degraded natural habitat once the rainforests.

Many people have given up hope of keeping wildlife in the natural habitat which is now the home ground for millions of acres for oil palms –an alien plant – but now things can be looking good as palm oil is no longer lucrative with low prices largely due to the better productivity in Kalimantan where prices are much lower.  So such oil palm growers could be exit and prepared to abandon their investment but we still need much money to restore the rainforests and other endemic plants including fruit trees.  

So the golden opportunity is here with #EcoGeneration as founded by me recently to obtain massive crowdfunding to get involved to bring back the wildlife and the rainforest etc to save ourselves as soon as possible to postpone or mitigate the onslaught of invisible but real climate change already prevailing in Sabah and the world. #EcoGeneration needs the support of every living person on earth for our continued existence in the pleasant climatic environment of my generation post WW2.  Sabah is experiencing for some decades already of maximum temperature of 35°Celcius and the hours of that is much longer daily (certainly many feel that after deforestation).  It is at this temperature that photosynthesis stops and today we are daily fed with agriculture produces “energised” by inorganic cheap fertilisers and other chemicals including pesticides to kill ourselves.  At the high temperature, cultivation becomes difficult and even many poultry farms are now in air-conditioned houses hence more expensive to farmers.  Consumers surely died sooner with higher costs of foods of dubious quality.

You always hear “donate blood to save life” and “donate organs to save lives”, then why neglect this message “Save the degraded earth to save ourselves 7 billions in all and not a few lives. Do it in #EcoGeneration now, and why not? 

 That is the real desperate scenario we are in and in the meantime we hope LKP would consider the survival of the wildlife in captivity there.

So it is most important now in the empirical picture that we save the degraded earth to save ourselves.

Joshua Y C Kong 13/11/2018