by Peter Kallang The future of Upper Baram is no longer an abstract debate about development versus conservation. It is a real and ongoing conflict involving Indigenous communities, logging interests, and government authorities responsible for managing Sarawak’s forests. Since 2024, Indigenous Penan and Kenyah communities in Upper Baram have opposed...
Obituary written by Rhett Ayers Butler, originally posted on butlernature.com In the early 1990s, the logging roads running through Sarawak’s Upper Baram became the site of a bitter confrontation. Penan families built wooden barricades across red-dirt tracks, blocking bulldozers and timber trucks and facing units of the Police Field Force. As...
What if a conservation project becomes a logging project? For decades, Indigenous communities in the Upper Baram region of Malaysian Borneo have been fighting deforestation. Through sustained efforts, they have successfully protected large areas of forest. These efforts gave rise to the vision of the Baram Peace Park, which was...
BARAM: More than 100 representatives from 40 Penan communities have unanimously rejected a proposal to construct hydroelectric dams along the Tutoh River in Baram, describing the project as a serious threat to their customary lands, livelihoods, and the future of the Penan people. The proposal involves the construction of hydroelectric dams...
For generations, Indigenous communities across Sarawak have governed and cared for vast stretches of forest, not as “protected areas” on paper, but as living territories that sustain their cultures, livelihoods, and identities. These communal forests are not empty wilderness. They are places of farming, hunting, fishing, gathering, ceremony, and history....
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...
A letter from 22 Penan communities in the Magoh and Limbang region is calling for a non-renewal of forest certification and support of their conservation efforts in the area. (Magoh/Sarawak/Malaysia) Twenty-two Penan communities in Sarawak, Malaysia, are urging the state government to halt logging in the Magoh and Limbang regions,...
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...
Upper Baram, Sarawak — Penan and Kenyah communities in the Upper Baram region of Sarawak, Malaysia have issued a strong and unified statement opposing any logging activities in their ancestral lands. “We call on the Sarawak Government to adopt a zero-logging policy immediately”, emphasizes Roland Engan, Indigenous peoples rights lawyer....
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...
