Sabah’s Maliau Basin; Secrets of the lost World

Malaysia’s State of Sabah, on the island of Borneo, is renowned for the riches of its natural heritage. One of its greatest treasures, in the southern central part of the State, only 40 km from the Indonesian border, is the “Lost World”- a huge bowl, spanning 390 km of almost pristine forests, and guarded by formidable cliffs that rise to over 1,700 m at their highest point. Serene and remote, this is the Maliau Basin – Sabah’s “Lost World”, which was described in 1988 as one of the few remaining relatively untouched wilderness areas on this earth. Maliau Basin was originally part of the 10,000 km timber concession held by the Yayasan Sabah (Sabah Foundation), an organisation dedicated to uplifting the standard of life and education of the people of Sabah, through revenue gained from timber extraction. Though slated for logging in 1970, the Basin continued to resist nearly all attempts to breach its formidable defences until 1981. This was when the Sabah Foundation, recognizing that the Basin contained a unique, almost self-contained ecosystem, and realizing that the need for conservation went hand in hand with development, designated the 390 kM Basin as a Conservation Area for scientific research and education, sister to the. Conservation Area already established at the Danum Valley, some 60 km to the east.