00:00Hi, I'm Lara Arifin and I'm the President of RIMAO.
00:03And I'm Harun Raman, I'm the Project Lead.
00:05We are the winners of the Star Golden Hearts Award 2024.
00:24The Malayan tiger today is critically endangered.
00:30The National Tiger Survey that was conducted between 2016 and 2020
00:35indicated there were less than 150 Malayan tigers left in the rainforests of Malaysia.
00:43What would it say about us as Malaysians if we lost the animal that sits on our national crest?
00:50The Malayan Tiger
00:59Fearing for the future of the Malayan tiger,
01:01Lara Arifin and Harun Raman, a husband and wife team of documentary filmmakers,
01:06took action to make a difference.
01:08Established in 2018, RIMAO takes on the formidable challenge of not only reversing the decline in Malayan tiger numbers,
01:16but also igniting a national movement to save this iconic species.
01:20To date, RIMAO has made a remarkable impact in areas such as the Royal Bellum State Park, Amanjaya and Korbu.
01:28The biggest threat to tigers is poaching because every part of the tiger is in demand.
01:34So for RIMAO, what we wanted to do was to put anti-poaching efforts in the jungle
01:38to basically help the government in the efforts to save the Malayan tiger.
01:42RIMAO, together with the Orang Asli community, is racing against time
01:46to bring the Malayan tiger back from the brink of extinction.
01:51For us, working with local communities is extremely important
01:54because you cannot have successful conservation efforts without the buy-in of the local community.
02:00And together we set up the team called the MENRAK team.
02:03And the MENRAK means the people in the Jahai language.
02:06So we established initially a team of only five patrollers in Royal Bellum,
02:11but now we have 30 patrollers in Royal Bellum.
02:14And we have extended our work not only to Royal Bellum but to Amanjaya and into Korbu as well.
02:20RIMAO's unique approach involved empowering the Orang Asli, the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia.
02:26At the heart of this is transforming young Orang Asli
02:29into skilled patrollers and guardians of their ancestral forests.
02:33These patrollers, equipped with technology like GPS devices and satellite phones,
02:38detect and deter illegal poachers, threatening the Malayan tiger.
02:43My role as a project team lead for RIMAO is basically to oversee all the teams that we have
02:48in the three landscapes that we work in, in Bellum, in Amanjaya and in Korbu.
02:53So I basically set the overall policy and I work with the coordinators quite closely.
02:59They in turn work with the patrollers.
03:01So usually what I do is do a lot of planning and I also do a lot of training as well.
03:06So I train the boys in smart protocols.
03:10When they do an observation in the forest, when they see any animal tracks or any human signs,
03:16they record and they have to record it properly in a particular protocol
03:21so that it can be used in the nationwide smart database.
03:26Camera traps are also set up to determine the condition of the forest
03:30and the condition of the animals in the wild.
03:32We also do what we call wildlife monitoring, where we set up camera traps.
03:36The camera traps help us because we leave the cameras for months and months
03:40and we can see whether the population of tiger prey is problematic
03:45or if we see a tiger is in trouble.
03:49Then we alert the authorities and we try to take action.
03:55One of the significant challenges Harun faces is bridging the gap between traditional knowledge
04:00and technological literacy among the Orang Asli patrollers.
04:07One of the biggest challenges is actually teaching the Orang Asli how to do all the signs.
04:12The signs have to be quite exact.
04:15And when a patroller doesn't know how to read and write, that can be very challenging.
04:18But we teach them how to do this and we teach them how to read and write what they need.
04:23But for somebody who can't read and write, that's a mountain to climb.
04:27And they have basically climbed a very, very tall mountain.
04:38One of the young patrollers, 24-year-old Kivan Dali from the Semai tribe,
04:43said he wants to guard the forest and see the wildlife thrive.
04:57The forest can be up to 2-3 kilometres long.
05:03It's important to do this job because we want to protect the forest,
05:06reduce the number of predators in the forest.
05:08Because we want to see that the wildlife are all alive.
05:11If possible, we want to see all the animals in the forest.
05:16Besides providing a steady job for the Orang Asli community,
05:19Rimau has also set up a community fund component,
05:22which makes it different from other NGOs.
05:28I think for us it's important to see the work that we do as more holistic
05:33and not just the patrolling work.
05:36It's important for us to see the work that we do as more holistic
05:40and not just the patrolling work.
05:42One of the things that Rimau does is that we have a community fund component
05:46to our programme.
05:47So basically for every day the patroller works,
05:49RM10 is put into the community fund,
05:52where it can be shared and the benefits are shared with the whole community.
05:56So whether it's for education or for health,
05:59or sometimes it's an emergency and they need the money,
06:02and we help them with that.
06:04Lara's vision extended beyond conservation,
06:07fostering a national consciousness
06:10She passionately argued for a whole-of-nation approach,
06:13emphasising that it cannot just rest on the shoulders
06:16of the wildlife department or the forestry department,
06:19but requires a comprehensive collective effort.
06:23There is still a lot of work to be done.
06:25We are nowhere near being able to say that the Malayan tiger is safe.
06:30And one of the important things for me is that this requires
06:34a whole-of-nation approach.
06:36This requires a whole-of-nation approach.
06:39It cannot be just Jabatan Perilitan or the forestry department.
06:43We need all the government departments to work together.
06:46We need all the NGOs to come together.
06:49We need the foundations to come together.
06:51So we need to put all our efforts in to making sure
06:56that they have a future here.
07:02Winning awards is about getting the message heard,
07:05many people still don't know about the plight of the Malayan tiger.
07:08And I think this is one way for more Malaysians to understand
07:12that the Malayan tiger is in crisis.
07:16And I think with the award, that we can help share this information
07:20out to a bigger audience.
07:29Happy 10th anniversary, Star Golden Hearts Award.
07:35Happy 10th anniversary, Star Golden Hearts Award.
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