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I’m Crystal DiMiceli and welcome to the Forces for Nature show.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hear of these days? Do you feel like you as just one person can’t really make a difference? Forces for Nature cuts through that negativity. In each episode, I interview somebody who’s doing great things for animals and the environment.

We talk about the challenge they’re addressing, the solution they have found, what keeps them going, and we’ll leave you with practical action tips so that you too can become a force for nature.

Today’s guest is Farina Othman, founder of the organization Seratu Aatai based in Sabah, Malaysia. Her work focuses on human coexistence with wildlife, especially the Bornean elephant. How many of us have experienced seeing an animal in our backyards that we aren’t too comfortable with? How did you react? Now, imagine if that was an elephant! Farina’s strategies have helped local communities learn how to live alongside these animals. And she goes one step further to work hand in hand with palm oil plantations, which are so often deemed the bad guys but, yet, could be her greatest asset.

Crystal: Hi, Farina. Thank you so much for joining me on forces for nature. It’s so great to have you.

Farina: Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Crystal: As human population grows and development spreads, humans are increasingly coming into contact with wildlife. To start, what are the pressures on the natural landscape in your area of the world?

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Farina: Malaysia? I think it’s very interesting at this point because with the human population growth we, we cannot deny that , it’s also give a lot of pressure to our environment. We are one of the biodiversity hotspots in the world.

We are also still developing countries. So we are always in this situation, in the dilemma between, , try to be developed countries by having like more facilities more infrastructure, but at the same time, try to also preserve and conserve our wildlife. So I guess to do that at the beginning, we forgot that we are also sharing the landscape with other wildlife, which also needs the same things like us, they are also living things, , they need water, they need a home so that, , they can go and find their, mates and reproduce. So we forgot to include this bit, but I guess now with more awareness and a lot of research we know that there are things that could be done.

So you can have both but. Still a big , challenge to kind of switch a little bit of people perception and, and the way we are thinking. , so yeah, that’s what we are trying to do now.

Crystal: What are the pressures? . For

Farina: most of the area right now, because of this habitat conversion and more and more habitat fragmentation. Wildlife and people are in contact more frequently right now. So that’s where, , you have for example, human wildlife conflict.

And then, , there are more opportunity for people to go into the habitat the forest, , and do hunting. And also we, when two habitats are too fragmented, then you have Certain wildlife, they are becoming isolated. So meaning that , there is no mixing between one wildlife population with another, so they could be, , you know,, problems inbreeding. So once we have certain diseases happen, then it can wipe all our wildlife. So these are some of the example of the pressure that are facing by our wildlife in Sabah..

Crystal: And what’s the land being converted to?

Farina: Yeah. So currently most of the land developed for, socioeconomic so we have, infrastructure roots and also, a monoculture plantation. Most of it is , the oil palm plantation oil palm.

So yeah, oil palm. So that’s why you have, this is one of our major kind of crop , in Sabah now. Yeah.

Crystal: So you mentioned wildlife conflict , as people start encroaching on wild areas that the animals live in, what does the wildlife conflict look like there? , in general, but also more specifically with the animal that you work with, the Bornean elephant.

Farina: So human elephants conflict usually happens when people, they don’t feel safe.

And also, you know, when the elephants damage their crops, their properties, , sometimes it can break your kitchen and also the elephant can poke your water tank, for example. , and this kind of conflict then could change to another level of conflict, when people get frustrated, they, , report to wildlife department, for example, or to any NGO, hoping that , they will get some help or some compensation for this losses, but they don’t get it.

Then it turned out to be another set of, of Of conflicts, you know, so it’s becoming more tense and sometimes conflicts can be also between for example the conservationists wants people to live together, to coexist with the elephants, but the local committees, for example, they don’t want to do that.

Or they want elephants to be translocated all the time. And then, , like scientists or wildlife department think that is not the first option, you have to try other things. So that is another set of conflict. So if you’re asking me it’s human to human conflict is actually a bigger issue to be solved than human and elephants conflict.

Crystal: That’s a really good point in that conservationists are being looked at as the enemy. Yeah,

, so I know in Latin America, for example, there have been many instances and one even very recently in Brazil where people trying to protect the natural land are getting killed for it.

Do, do you feel threatened at all?

Farina: Actually we are conservation scientists. We are quite lucky in Malaysia because , , our government are still open-minded to receive, , our feedbacks and our, respond.

Maybe, they’re not very happy, but we can still be in the same room and try to find solution and win-win situation. How do we proceed with the development? And at the same time, we have to think about , our heritage, our wildlife, our forest and things like this.

So we are still very lucky. And we are hoping that this relationship , hate and love relationship can still continue in the future. And I hope that we can start also trying to build the, the new generation with the new set of thinking saying that we can have development, which doesn’t require us to jeopardize or to sacrifice our, our wildlife and environment.

Crystal: And in your dedication to protecting the Bornan elephant, you created a nonprofit called and correct me if I, if I pronounce this incorrectly, but Seratu Aatai.

Farina: . Nice. Well done. Yeah. That

Crystal: now to carry out your mission. Your three primary pillars are scientific research, community engagement and education and awareness programs.

, one element of community engagement is teaching locals about elephant behavior. Why was this an issue and how has the training been

Farina: helpful? Right. So like I said, , coexistence, it’s not something very easy. , if you. Just close your eyes for a few seconds and you imagine elephants behind your backyard.

, especially during the night when , you are, you really want to rest, you know, after a long day, but you still have to wake up during the night and try to make sure that the elephants doesn’t come too close to your home. So it’s not easy. And I know what we are asking from the communities it’s quite , for someone who doesn’t know elephants very much, they don’t follow the elephants, they don’t study the elephants.

So it, it is a big things that you want them to to do but we know as well that most of the time. Elephants , being a mega fauna, a big animal, people always thought that they want to charge you or attack you all the time. , they need to understand the elephants. They are scared of people.

, at least for the Bornean elephants. I am not saying, , about the other Asian or African elephants, because it’s depend on also their history. , but for our Bornean elephants, they are still kind of have that, kind of mindset that people are, something that we have to avoid, not something that you have to you want to, you know, Come into conflict with yes, exactly.

, so we see this opportunity. If we could preserve this behavior of elephants, then somehow we can avoid a lot of accidents, we want to tell them that when you see elephants, you don’t run all the time. They will show you signs before they do something to you. So you have to respect the sign.

You have to respect the distance. Then I think we can avoid a lot of, you know negative impact. Yeah. And we know that coincidence is the only way to go. So there is no way now that you expect the elephant just to live in, for example, forest reserve or national park we know elephants will move out from this area.

Because again, coming back to your question on, their habitat fermentation and things like that. So there is no way we can keep our elephants just in this area, just

Crystal: in the, the parks they’ll

Farina: they’ll come out. Okay. Yeah. So it’s, that’s why we need to give some sort of skill to our local community so that they can understand and try to avoid anything bad.

Crystal: I think it’s hard for people to imagine, like if you don’t live in an area that has elephants, , it’s probably hard for people to imagine what it’s like to have an elephant in your backyard. It completely reminds me of my family’s home. So , they have bears that come into their backyard and there’s been like coyotes in the neighborhood.

, and so similar situation, you have these animals that you don’t understand necessarily walking close to where you live, walking close to where your children play, and it’s completely understandable why, why people would be afraid. So it’s a very interesting approach to teach people about the behavior so they know whether or not they need to be worried in

Farina: that moment.

So when I say it for us at Seratu Aatai, we think that sharing landscape doesn’t mean that you have to leave shoulder to shoulder with the elephants. We believe that we have to enhance the elephant movement. So , we must make it easier for the elephants to move from one place to another place.

The thing is that we stop them everywhere. , you have electric fencing everywhere. You have people doing elephant control everywhere. So the elephants, they have their own routes and their own thing that they need to find. So , the more you try to stop them, the worse the situation can be. But yeah, so it, it takes, it takes a lot of efforts to try to make people understand this

Crystal: now, in order to facilitate them moving from one wild area to another, do you guys have wildlife corridors set up , for the listener who might not know or realize what a wildlife corridor is, they’re essentially ribbons of land that connect larger pieces of wild areas and allow for mixing for animals to move in between.

So do you guys have wildlife corridors or are you working on establishing

Farina: them? So for elephants corridor is. It’s if we call it as a corridor, it’s not going. I, I feel that we are giving a lot of well, I cannot say this cause a lot of people are working on corridors then they, they will think I’m trying to sabatage their project.

So what I’m trying to say is that elephants will not just stay in a corridor. So for example, the area where, where I’m working lower Keyan and wildlife sancuary. So the wildlife century is actually built as a corridor to connect forest reserve. One about four forest reserves. So basically the elephants in lower kina where I’m based they are living in corridors , but still Elephants have their ecological needs, male elephants need to be away from the female elephants, for example.

So if female elephants are living in the corridor, because this corridor are much more safer and also, you know have nutritious foods. So the male will start to go outside the corridor now because male need to be far away from female and , they require quantity rather than quality.

So this is where the oil palm plantation is becoming important because. Lower kina bat Tangan are surrounded with oil palm plantations. So most of the males right now are having to move outside into the plantation. And , they have a lot of food available like the oil Palm trees itself , , so, so they will eat that fruit.

Yeah. So, so they can get big land and then they have food there. So that’s why we have to engage with the oil palm plantation. We cannot, , we have to stop like. Blaming them for what have already happened. Flagging the deforestation. Yes. The it’s already happened. It’s the oil palm plantations are already there.

So we need to figure out the way how we can engage with them and work with them and make them understand. And we are pretty lucky because for the past several years we have built the trust. And now we have some players who, , genuinely, wants to work with us.

Crystal: I imagine the oil Palm owners are concerned about the elephants eating their crop.

But they’re willing to,

Farina: to work. Well, it depends because protecting you. Yeah, because the, in oil Palm industry itself, you have different types of growers you have from the small holders up to the big players. So usually the big producers, they don’t mind because they have big line and they have more resources.

So usually the small holders are also the members of the local communities that we are working with. So , it’s becoming more and more like a. Kind of a mean income for most of the members in the local communities to have, , a small plot of land and then they grow oil Palm. So, these are the most affected group actually compared to the others.

So when you want to engage with them, , you have to have different strategies because when you speak to the small holders, , then they will say that we only have 50 trees and this is the only income that we have, , but when you speak to the bigger companies, usually they don’t have problems.

, you just need to give them some sort of guidelines so that they can follow and include that in their management plan.

Crystal: I mean, so many people demonize oil Palm because of the effects that they have on ecosystems, but , it’s really interesting to hear your perspective on how you have to, it it’s happened.

They’re there. What can you do now? And I think that’s a very , practical way to address it. I mean, obviously if you could avoid the deforestation in the first place that’s yeah. The number one goal, but once it’s there. Yeah. It’s there.

Farina: . Being a Malaysia, we know that that is one of , mean income for our country.

So basically the industry helped to build our education, our health system. So . I think that it’s crucial to keep it, but I could also see that the industry try very hard to improve how the systems work before , with different certification, with different standards that they have to follow right now, ?

So you have voluntary standards and then you have kind of compulsory, mandatory certification that you have to follow by our government. So they are looking out to reach out to people like, scientists and to. Them to ask us, , to help them with improving the way they are doing right now, things that they’re doing now.

, I see over the years that they are trying very hard to improve, it’s just, we need to follow up all the time to make sure that it goes through. The thing is that sometimes our fault is that we always engage. And then we forget first sometimes. And when the issue comes back again, you start to engage again.

So for me, following it up until the something being done to the end, it’s very important. That’s why Seratu Aatai. We decided to just focus on one species, elephants, and also on human and wildlife conflicts, human and elephant conflicts, that issue so that , with our small teams, we can follow true until the end, until we achieve something.

Crystal: focusing in on, on a specific niche. Do you have any stories about other things that you guys are doing to address these issues?

Farina: Yeah, , I’m working with another NGO called Huan OCP. They started a local community elephant team because they feel that if they don’t do something for example, try to make .

The members of their community understands elephant needs and behavior. Then people will start retaliate and, you know, kill the elephants and things like that. So for the past several years, we started the same model in other communities.

And it’s very crucial because this team could help doing elephant control. For example, before the elephants are coming too far away or before the wildlife department could be there. Seratu Aatai kind of helping technically try to train them on elephant behavior and how to take data so that we can understand better the HCC situation in the area.

So I’m very pleased that, , people starts to have this positive shift towards the elephants, , that we cannot anymore avoid the elephants. We have to find a way how to live with them and we are trying to do something , to coexist.

Crystal: Yeah. Almost like a neighborhood watch

Farina: exactly. In a way. Yeah. Mm-hmm yeah. Yep.

Crystal: Do you have any interesting stories from an incident where , one of the teams had to get involved? Or there was a rogue elephant perhaps.

Farina: Oh okay. Personally. Hm, well, not rogue elephant, but what happened to one of the collared elephants. So Sandy, his name is Sandy. Who’s collared. You said collared. He got collared. I mean, we collared him recently. , we followed him since 2008.

And , he’s like a permanent resident in the oil palm plantations. I rarely rarely see him in the forest, And he, he he’s a good teacher. So from time to time, I saw him, , teaching the other male elephants, how to survive in the oil palm plantation. oh, no. Yeah. So for example when he was around 30 years old, he’s like maybe almost five to six feet already.

So he’s quite tall, big guy, and he’s showing the other male elephant how to cross over the electric fencing without having to knock the fence down. So it’s very interesting because he made, he, when he did it, he, he did it very slow, you know, like one step, another step, well actually to avoid being shocked by the electric fence one thing.

But I guess at the same time, he’s like trying to show like step by step, how you do that. So, but the other two were like maybe still very new and young and , they were trying different things, but not actually following what Sandy did, but he was waiting very , patiently on the other side of the electric fence waiting for the other two to cross.

And then they, they did manage, but they find their, their way and then they, they walk away. So we collared him About three months ago. And he actually pass away about a week after we collared him. So we think that, it’s because he spent too much time in the oil plantation eating different vegetation that has been sprayed with herbicides.

So it’s a accumulation of, of things. ,

. So yeah, I another thing he make us realize that We have to investigate and to monitor how, the elephants that live in the plantation, how they’re doing internally. And then again try again to improve , the practices and things like that, because of, of his, this case, then we need to identify what sort of things that they are eating and when , we know they are eating specific plants, then we have to make sure that how the plantation actually managing this plant, are they spraying with , , pesticides and other things.

So yeah.

Crystal: Oh, sad story.

But I mean, as a side note, the work that you’re doing in, in studying elephants in general, but also Sandy, you will help figure out the best ways that the oil Palm plantations.

Spray or not spray. Yeah. Pesticides and herbicides. That would be safer for the elephants for, so for in the long run his, his death won’t

Farina: be in vain. Yeah. It’s not only evidence something. We, we will investigate the civets that live in the plantation, even their fur also showing that there are high level of heavy metals in the fur of civets.

So we have to make sure that this landscape right now, there is no way that we can stop animals from going there. We just need to figure out like how to try very best, how to improve this. And, and when you are talking about spraying, it take a lot of things, you know, like for example, the water resources.

So there are a lot of things that they need to change. So , there are more issues coming in up coming, coming. So we have to be smart at which one that you want to tackle first, you know,

Crystal: but you’re working on it. and so there’s hope in that. ,

In looping back to what you were saying earlier, in terms of like people versus people, conflict. How do you as a conservationist get people to trust you and on board with what you’re doing?

Farina: Right. First of all, I think my advantage is being a national. So I understood the community. I understood their culture.

I speak the same language. And all the time, I try to tell them that I’m not here to tell you what to do. We are going to work on this together. You understand better your landscape, your area. And I have , knowledge and experience with the elephant. So how do we merge now? And , to have that shared vision is very, very important.

So I’m pretty lucky in that sense. And also another advantage I have is that our people, they want to coexist. It’s just that they are too frustrated because they don’t know what they need to do. Somehow, you know, I think it’s a human nature that we need to have control on everything when we don’t have control on something that we feel that , we are not safe and we are not , secure and things like that.

So hopefully when they feel that, okay, there is someone Malaysian , you know um, who. Trying to go through these challenges with me, not like putting all, everything on my shoulders, like then slowly, you know, we build the trust. That’s why I think it’s very important to also have the local elephant team from the community itself because, you know, we are not only helping them to build, , source of income, but they also understands better their, communities members, they know which one is like more aggressive, which one is like more soft, ?

So we have to learn also about people behavior in order to bring them together in the same room and create this shared vision. , I try my best to try to expose them to different situation, like to, to letting them know that they’re not the only one who’s facing these issues. Other people are also having like give platform for them to communicate and to share their frustration.

And, at the same time, try to just be a good listener and slowly we work on the solution together.

Crystal: I think what you say is, is quite scalable in that if somebody has an affinity for wildlife work with your neighbors, create a neighborhood watch. So to, so to speak

and so even if you don’t have elephants necessarily walking in your backyard, but you have bears or what have you. , these little groups could be more powerful than some big name NGO. So I think that’s, that’s a really great point. .

Mm-hmm so last question. What can the listener do to help Bornean

elephants from wherever they are?

Farina: So actually they are very little attention given still to the Bornean elephants. We are still uncovering, , the story of the Bornean elephants. So I will say that when you try to Learn as much as you can , about , these born elephants, because they are genetically different from other Asian elephants.

They are quite unique and, , try to share and create awareness as much as possible the works that people are doing in Borneo to help these elephants hopefully, you know, there will be more supports coming in and to continue our work. Secondly what he could do is try really to understand , because oil Palm everywhere, , , you use it your daily things, you know, like soap and not only foods, you know, other things.

So when you support certified oil palm, then you are actually supporting good practices. And I guess you can also, when you come visit for example you know, going, you get to a chance to go and observe wild elephants along Kindt river or in other area, make sure that you respect the distance.

Although someone try to bring you close to the elephants, you know, maybe try to refrain yourself from doing that because we don’t want to change the elephant. , it’s better that you bring a binocular and you enjoy them from far because you will see more natural behavior and you will get to see them doing, more unique behavior, you, really enjoy them in the. So I guess that’s the three things. You can also follow our social media. We sometimes post our progress and our success story and sometimes the failures so that we can get , advice and things like that with, the public.

So yeah, I, I look forward to connect with, with people. Those are great

Crystal: suggestions, Farina, thank you for chatting with me today. It was really interesting. And thank you for all that you do. You’re making a difference.

You may not be dealing with elephants, but how many of us have had wildlife come close to where we live? We’re moving into what used to be their homes and it’s only right learn how best to coexist with one another. Afterall, they’re really not all that different. They, too, are just trying to survive their own daily grind and do the best they can for their families. A little bit of empathy and a lot of nonjudge-y-ness, Farina has proven, can go a long way.