Evaluating the Efficacy of Sarawak's Protected Areas Network for Conserving Native Wildlife

Sarawak has lost most of its primary rainforest, and rainforest reserves are small and scattered as a consequence. While extensive areas of secondary forest exist, much of the terrestrial wildlife occurs outside protected areas. We examine the protected areas network in Sarawak to determine whether it protects vulnerable mammal species. We use taxon data from the IUCN database at a resolution of 10 km x 10 km. We compare the status and distribution of mammal species in Sarawak with the rest of the island of Borneo and in so doing assign conservation importance values to species in Sarawak. Using the conservation planning software Marxan, we explored the efficiency of the existing protected areas network, species richness and rarity hotspots, prime forest sites and
complementary networks as alternative approaches to priority reserve selection, as well as the potential use of ‘indicator’ taxa. In this paper we discuss our procedures and data sources, and seek advice on how to proceed further.