Dear friends, On the southern slope of Mount Murud Kecil, a logging road is creeping into clouded leopard habitat and forests rich with Rhizanthes lowii: one of the rarest flowering plants on earth. Logging company Borneoland Timber is steadily advancing towards the native customary territories of the Kenyah and Penan...
What: Rapid expansion of native forest logging by Borneoland Timber Resources, moving toward the territory of Long Semiyang — an Indigenous Kenyah village on the Baram River in Sarawak. Where: Long Semiyang is located in the Upper Baram region of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. When: Borneoland Timber Resources has been operating...
Indigenous communities in Tatau, Sarawak are calling on global palm oil buyers to investigate a plantation, where they say the company has cleared their customary forests without consent and is now threatening the river system they depend on. Nine Iban longhouse communities along the Sungai Sap river say large areas...
Deforestation in Pahang, Peninsular Malaysia © Albert Bansa / Friends of the Earth A new report by Friends of the Earth UK, RimbaWatch, and Earthsight confirms what we and our partners have been documenting for years: timber certification in Malaysia is failing to protect forests or uphold Indigenous rights. In...
(MIRI, March 24, 2026) – Residents of Sawa Ali are calling for urgent action to stop logging activities by Borneoland Timber Resources (BTR) in Block 24, a community forest reserve that serves as their primary source of livelihood. Sawa Ali Village Head, Ipa Ulai, said the logging operations not only...
UPOV, the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, is a global system of plant breeders’ rights. It gives legal monopoly rights to companies or institutions that develop “new” plant varieties. In Sarawak and across Malaysia, many Indigenous communities strongly oppose joining or aligning national law with...
Penan Community of Sawa Ali Forces Temporary Stop to Borneoland Timber Resources’ Logging Activities Miri, Sarawak — Logging operations by Borneoland Timber Resources (“Borneoland”) in the highly contested Upper Baram region have been temporarily halted. This marks a significant victory for the Indigenous Penan community of Sawa Ali, who have steadfastly resisted...
What: Malaysia has confirmed that palm oil companies operating on disputed or illegally occupied native customary rights (NCR) land can now have their Malaysian Sustainable Palm Oil (MSPO) certification suspended or revoked. Under the MSPO 2.0 guidelines released this year, companies operating plantations must prove lawful land tenure, demonstrate that...
Dear Friends, As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about what it means to do this work in a place where the challenges never seem to end. Plantations continue to expand, logging companies push deeper into forests, and communities face immense pressure on their lands and livelihoods. And...
(Miri, Sarawak — November 13, 2025) The repeated postponement of the court ruling on logging activities in the Data Bila area continues to generate dissatisfaction among local villagers and plaintiffs, who have been awaiting resolution of their customary land claims and demanding transparency on logging activities by company Borneoland Timber...
