Yayasan Sabah Forest Management Area

Yayasan Sabah was established in 1966 with the aim of improving the lives of Malaysians living in Sabah by the provision of welfare, medical and educational services. In order to provide a sustainable source of revenue to fund these activities Yayasan Sabah was granted management rights over a huge forest concession in south-eastern Sabah with a total area of over 1 million hectares (10,000 km2). The concession is known as the Yayasan Sabah Forest Management Area (YSFMA) and is managed on behalf of Yayasan Sabah by its wholly owned commercial subsidiary Innoprise Corporation. The YSFMA occupies almost 14% of the entire land area of Sabah and is one of the largest forest concessions in SE Asia.

The commercially managed natural forests of the YSFMA, which have been selectively harvested from the early 1970s onwards, total approximately 750,000 ha. The concession includes approximately 60,000 ha of agricultural and exotic timber plantations with a further 80,000 ha earmarked for conversion to oil palm plantation by 2010.

The majority of the commercial forest to the east and north of DVCA, which can be accessed easily from the field centre, were selectively harvested using a combination of tractor logging in areas of moderate terrain and cable or 'high-lead' yarding on steeper slopes. These harvesting methods resulted in different patterns of disturbance; high-lead yarding involved winching logs up or down a slope towards a central collection point around the machine itself and forest in the immediate vicinity of the machine set-up (±20 ha) was often completely degraded with further severe damage extending outwards along winching 'corridors'. Use of this highly damaging technique was banned by the Sabah Forestry Department in 1996. Tractor yarding results in a more random mosaic of damage including highly degraded areas such as skid tracks, through lightly disturbed to completely untouched forest remnants.

In 1993, an area of forest of approximately 450 ha to the south of DVFC was harvested for experimental purposes using Reduced Impact Logging techniques in tandem (for purposes of comparison) with the conventionally logged 1993 coupe.

The location of logging coupes within the YSFMA is known and roads, topography and compartment boundaries (designated logging areas within coupes, usually of about 50ha in size) are mapped to a scale of 1:12,500. Detailed timber extraction data are available by compartment for most areas to the east and north of DVCA and include volume (by timber group) and logging method.

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