Community camera-trap confirms forest slated for Rich Venture’s 44,545-hectare bamboo project is a biodiversity hotspot; satellite imagery shows old logging roads reopened
BELAGA, SARAWAK: Indigenous communities living beside the Bakun reservoir have documented a sun bear mother and her cub, along with 26 other mammal and bird species, inside a forest concession currently being cleared for a commercial bamboo plantation by Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd. The camera-trap survey, carried out by local teams over two months, provides the strongest evidence yet that the licence area is a biodiversity hotspot that should be protected rather than converted to monoculture.
The Bornean sun bear is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List and is a Protected Species under Sarawak’s Wild Life Protection Ordinance. The evidence of a mother with a cub indicates a breeding population that depends on intact forest for survival. Sun bear populations across Borneo have fallen by an estimated 30 to 35 percent, and the species is increasingly rare in Sarawak because of habitat loss and poaching.
The survey also recorded the White-fronted Langur, the Tufted Ground Squirrel, and the Bornean Great Argus, all of which are Totally Protected under the Wild Life Protection Ordinance, and two macaque species listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The sighting of a Bornean Bearded Pig in the survey is also particularly significant – as populations across Borneo collapsed after African swine fever in 2020.
Clearing continues
According to documents obtained by the community, Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd holds License for Planted Forests LPF/0056, with plans to convert more than 20,000 hectares of native forest to bamboo. Clearing began in early 2025 and prompted seven Kenyah, Kayan, Lahanan and Penan communities (Uma Belor, Uma Lahanan, Uma Kelep, Uma Penan Talun, Uma Balui Liko, Uma Juman and Uma Daro) to lodge a police report in September 2025 demanding suspension of the licence.
“We have already raised this directly with the Premier,” said Denis Hang Bilang, Chairman of the Customary and Native Land Committee of Hulu Balui. “When we met with him at his office on 25 February 2026, we asked him to re-establish our rights over the unsubmerged land within 10 kilometres of the reservoir bank. That land is ours, and it is where these animals live.”
Satellite monitoring by The Borneo Project shows that clearing in this concession has resumed in recent months, and that old logging roads through the area have been re-established. Many communities were already displaced once, when the Bakun reservoir flooded their ancestral lands in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The forest now under licence is much of what remains of their ancestral lands.
“The sun bears and other wildlife caught on our camera traps may well be the very animals that were rescued and released during the Wildlife Monitoring and Rescue (WiMoR) programme in 2010–2011, a joint effort by the Sarawak Forestry Corporation and Sarawak Energy”, continued Bilang. “The state spent time and money saving these animals once. Why destroy their habitat now?”
Owner implicated in multiple allegations
Rich Venture Plantation Sdn Bhd is 80 per cent owned by Miri timber tycoon Hii King Chiong and his son Hii Wei Wen, according to Companies Commission of Malaysia records. The company’s registered business is timber as well as plantation, and the Hii family also owns Rich Venture Sdn Bhd, a separate log extraction and trading company whose directors are Hii King Chiong, his wife Datin Ting Hua Eng and his son Hii Wei Wen.
Bruno Manser Fonds’ recent report, Plundering the Baram Peace Park, also identifies Hii King Chiong as the principal shareholder of Borneoland Timber Resources Sdn Bhd, the company granted a timber concession over more than 100,000 hectares of a proposed Indigenous-led conservation area in the Upper Baram.
Sarawak Premier Abang Johari witnessed the signing of Rich Venture Plantation’s bamboo MoU with the state timber agency STIDC in 2023, and government and company press releases show him standing alongside Hii family representatives on several other occasions.
“Communities affected by both companies say their complaints to the government have gone largely unanswered” said Celine, Managing Director of SAVE Rivers. “Given the relationships on the public record, it is fair to ask whether those complaints are being heard at all.”
ENDS
This is a join press release from SAVE Rivers and The Borneo Project
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