Work Travel Volunteer

We all know logging in Borneo is causing huge environmental damage plus destroying the diversity of flora and fauna but it also is displacing ethnic minority tribes such as the Penan, who live the traditional hunter-gatherer way and cannot survive with the continued destruction of primary (and secondary) rainforest.

The BBC series Tribe recently highlighted the problems. The Penan live in make-shift rattan huts and every few weeks will relocate, often to go in search of new sago plants, which forms a large percentage of their diet. Their diet is also made up of local wild animals such as frogs, squirrels and boar, most of which are killed using the highly skilled blowpipes, a thin carved piece of wood dipped in poisonous tree sap. The destruction of native forest is decreasing the amount of forest dramatically for the forest people to live in and find food. Even the water is becoming undrinkable. The soil leaches into the river when trees near the riverbank are felled. The ground is no longer stable once their are no living trees for the soil to cling to.