The deramakot landscape in sabah, malaysian borneo makes up part of the central sabah managed elephant range

The U.S. Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service, through the Asian Elephant Conservation Fund (CFDA 15.621), awarded a $748,691.07 project grant to Panthera Corporation. The grant will support a 3-year initiative to increase site protection for Bornean elephants in the Deramakot landscape of Malaysian Borneo. Key components include:

1. Assisting the establishment of a community-managed conservation area to close a critical gap in landscape protection and deter poaching from outside the area.
2. Building the capacity of local enforcement teams through evidence-based patrol planning to better utilize community ranger patrols.
3. Facilitating data sharing across government agencies using a cloud-based platform to improve coordination and conservation outcomes.

The grant aims to strengthen community engagement, enhance protected area management, and combat wildlife trafficking in this key habitat for the endangered Bornean elephant population.

In this key landscape for bornean elephants, panthera has been working closely with government agencies and local communities for the last three years. We have supported a partnership between government agencies and four local communities to institutionalize community ranger teams and community-based patrolling. Moving forward, we propose to increase site protection in deramakot by supporting communities in the creation of a community conservation area (CCA) in an area of currently unprotected forests. The long-term goal for this CCA is that IT will be managed by local communities for their cultural needs (sustainable harvest of bearded pigs and sambar for wild meat). The CCA will also serve to close a key GAP in deramakots overall site protection, where poachers from outside keramuak use the unprotected forests to enter the landscape. In addition to the CCA, we propose to increase capacity for deramakot enforcement team leaders in terms of evidence-based patrol planning. This will ensure that community ranger teams are properly utilized to patrol poaching hotspots. Lastly, we will work with different government agencies in deramakot to overcome inter-agency data sharing challenges using a one-stop cloud-based platform (smart connect).