Tawai Forest Reserve is a protected forest reserve in

Telupid District The Telupid District () is an administrative district in the Malaysian state of Sabah, part of the Sandakan Division which includes the districts of Beluran, Kinabatangan, Sandakan and Tongod. The capital of the district is in Telupid Town. ...

Sandakan Division Sandakan Division () is an administrative division of Sabah, Malaysia. It stretches diagonally from the northeastern coast of Sabah to the state's central region. With an area of 28,205 square kilometres, it occupies 38.3% of Sabah's territory, ...

Sabah Sabah () is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia located in northern Borneo, in the region of East Malaysia. Sabah has land borders with the Malaysian state of Sarawak to the southwest and Indonesia's North Kalima ...

, Malaysia. It was first created in January 1972, before being designated as a Class 1 Protection Forest by the Sabah Forestry Department in 1984. It was fully demarcated in 2002, resulting in an area of . The reserve is mostly mountainous, consisting of

ultramafic Ultramafic rocks (also referred to as ultrabasic rocks, although the terms are not wholly equivalent) are igneous and meta-igneous rocks with a very low silica content (less than 45%), generally >18% MgO, high FeO, low potassium, and are usua ...

forest, upland mixed

dipterocarp Dipterocarpaceae is a family of flowering plants with 22 genera and about 695 known species of mainly lowland tropical forest trees. Their distribution is pantropical, from northern South America to Africa, the Seychelles, India, Indochina, Indo ...

forest and

kerangas The Sundaland heath forests, also known as ''Kerangas'' forest, is a type of tropical moist forest found on the island of Borneo, which is divided between Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as on the Indonesian islands of Belitung and Ban ...

forest. Mount Tawai, at , is within the reserve. It is flattest near its northern and eastern edges. The Tawai waterfall is located within the reserve, part of the many rivers which flow through it. Protection of these headwaters was part of the reason for the reserve's establishment. The reserve has been badly affected by fires that have spread into the reserve from nearby settlements and

palm oil Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from o ...

plantations.

Illegal logging Illegal logging is the harvest, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests; extraction without permission, or from a p ...

has occurred in areas of dipterocarp forest. Illegal logging and land clearance has occurred in some portions of the reserve. There are plans for the

Pan-Borneo Highway The Pan-Borneo Highway () including the sections now known as the Pan Borneo Expressway, is a controlled-access highway on Borneo Island, connecting two Malaysian states, Sabah and Sarawak, with Brunei. The length of the entire highway is for ...

to be expanded in part through the northern portion of the reserve. The forestry department runs a Rainforest Camp to generate tourism money, providing access to the clean river water of the reserve, rainforest treks, and a waystop near the path of the

Sandakan Death Marches The Sandakan Death Marches were a series of forced marches in Borneo from Sandakan to Ranau which resulted in the deaths of 2,434 Allied prisoners of war held captive by the Empire of Japan during the Pacific campaign of World War II at the ...

Flora

1,070 floral species have been identified within Tawai Forest Reserve, 1030

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s, 25

fern The ferns (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta) are a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. They differ from mosses by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissue ...

s, 13

gymnosperm The gymnosperms ( ; ) are a group of woody, perennial Seed plant, seed-producing plants, typically lacking the protective outer covering which surrounds the seeds in flowering plants, that include Pinophyta, conifers, cycads, Ginkgo, and gnetoph ...

s, and 2

lycophyte The lycophytes, when broadly circumscribed, are a group of vascular plants that include the clubmosses. They are sometimes placed in a division Lycopodiophyta or Lycophyta or in a subdivision Lycopodiophytina. They are one of the oldest lineag ...

s. With 98 species

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to Borneo, 35 endemic to Sabah, and 4 endemic to the local area, it has the highest endemism of forest reserves within inland Sabah. The area is important for tree species including ''

Anisoptera A dragonfly is a flying insect belonging to the infraorder Anisoptera below the order Odonata. About 3,000 extant species of dragonflies are known. Most are tropical, with fewer species in temperate regions. Loss of wetland habitat threatens ...

'', ''

Dipterocarpus '' D. retusus'' in Köhler ''Dipterocarpus'' is a genus of flowering plants and the type genus of family Dipterocarpaceae. ''Dipterocarpus'' is the third-largest and most diverse genus among the Dipterocarpaceae. The species are well known for ...

'', ''

Hopea ''Hopea'' is a genus of plants in the family Dipterocarpaceae. It contains some 113 species, distributed from Sri Lanka and southern India to the Andaman Islands, Myanmar, southern China, and southward throughout Malesia to New Guinea. They are ...

'' and ''

Shorea Fruit of a ''Shorea'' species ''Shorea'' is a genus of about 47 species of mainly rainforest trees in the family Dipterocarpaceae. The timber of trees of the genus is sold under the common names lauan, luan, lawaan, meranti, seraya, balau, bang ...

'' species. An orchid species, ''

Paraphalaenopsis labukensis The genus ''Paraphalaenopsis'', abbreviated as Prphln in horticultural trade, is a member of the orchid family (Orchidaceae), consisting of 4 species endemic to Borneo and one natural (unconfirmed) hybrid, '' Paraphalaenopsis × thorntonii'' (''P ...

'', is endemic to the area. The forests are in good condition, aside from areas near the border of the reserve, especially the Ruku Ruku valley in the northeast, which is mainly secondary forest. Most of the reserve is ultramafic forest. At least 38 dipterocarp species have been identified.

Fauna

Tawai Forest Reserve is home to animals including wild boar,

clouded leopard The clouded leopard (''Neofelis nebulosa''), also called mainland clouded leopard, is a wild cat inhabiting dense forests from the foothills of the Himalayas through Northeast India and Bhutan to mainland Southeast Asia into South China. It w ...

barking deer Muntjacs ( ), also known as the barking deer or rib-faced deer, (URL is Google Books) are small deer of the genus ''Muntiacus'' native to South Asia and Southeast Asia. Muntjacs are thought to have begun appearing 15–35 million years ago, ...

, red leaf monkey and gibbon. Bird species include grey-breasted babbler and the near-threatened

scarlet-breasted flowerpecker The scarlet-breasted flowerpecker (''Prionochilus thoracicus'') is a species of bird in the family Dicaeidae. It is found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subt ...

, with a total of 47 species being identified. Butterflies inhabit shaded areas, including the poorly understood '' Delias henningia''.

Borneo elephant The Borneo elephant, also called the Bornean elephant or the Borneo pygmy elephant, is a subspecies of Asian elephant ''(Elephas maximus)'' that inhabits northeastern Borneo, in Indonesia and Malaysia. Its origin remains the subject of debate. A ...

s inhabit parts of the reserve, often concentrated in flat areas that are being considered for highway expansion.

References

External links

Tawai – Protected Planet
{{Protected areas of Sabah Forest reserves of Sabah Borneo lowland rain forests