2012: Penan native people; Baru (LHS), brother of Banai Tebai (2nd LHS) and Rasa (middle) and extended family, (On RHS) 17+yr old Senorita Along, daughter of Den Along Sega, with her son Dimas, 1yr old. They now living a settled but smi-hunter-gatherer lifestyle in Dayak hardwood homes. Long Gita, Limbang District, Sarawak Borneo 2012
Nomadic decades ago, have been forced to move up-river, to settled accomodation, far from their original hunter-gatherer grounds. The sound of chainsaws is not too distant, oil palm plantations are looming and the pipeline is right next door. Long Adang and Long Gita, Limbang Sarawak, Borneo..The huge Petronas Sabah-Sarawak pipeline is being built across the Borneo rainforest through native areas. Petronas is the government cash cow which funds about 45% of its budget. New roads are being built, though much of the transport follows the existing roads and infrastructure created by logging. Whilst the government heralds the project as a source of jobs for local people, it is unlikely to bring much but wanton damage to rainforest habitat and paving the way for further deforestation by oil palm plantations. Sarawak's primary rainforests have been systematically logged over decades, threatening the sustainable lifestyle of its indigenous peoples who relied on nomadic hunter-gathering and rotational slash & burn cultivation of small areas of forest to survive. For the natives this is disaster, a rapidly disappearing way of life, forced re-settlement, many becoming wage-slaves. Large and medium size tree trunks have been sawn down and dragged out by bulldozers, leaving destruction in their midst, and for the most part a primary rainforest ecosystem beyond repair. Nowadays palm oil plantations and hydro-electric dam projects cover hundreds of thousands of hectares of what was the world's oldest rainforest ecosystem which had some of the highest rates of flora and fauna endemism, species found there and nowhere else on Earth