In the heart of Sabah’s Kinabatangan, a simple act of empathy became a mission to restore harmony between people and elephants.
Through the RESPonsible Elephant Conservation Trust (RESPECT), degraded lands are being revived into thriving corridors for elephants.
For their noble efforts, the team is named as one of the 10 winners of the Star Golden Hearts Award 2025, an annual award by The Star that honours everyday Malaysian unsung heroes.
00:00Hi, we are RESPEC, Responsible Elephant Conservation Trust,
00:06and we are one of the winners of Star Golden Heart Awards 2025.
00:11Yeah!
00:30Located along Sabah's east coast, the Kinabatangan district is home to one of the state's richest floodplain ecosystems,
00:38a sanctuary where Bornean elephants, crocodiles, orangutans, and proboscis monkeys thrive alongside rural villages and community-run lodges.
00:49But as forests shrink and habitats become fragmented, encounters between people and wildlife have grown more frequent, and sometimes more desperate.
01:00One such incident in 2018, when a hungry baby elephant wandered into a school canteen in Telupid, stirred more than alarm.
01:07It moved Sabahan Hotelier-turned-conservationist Alexander Yee to act.
01:13I realized that the elephant has gone into the school to look for food in the canteen of the school.
01:20And I asked myself, why is there no food in the area that the elephant was in?
01:25I did some research and I visited Telupid town.
01:30I realized that a good part of the town, the forest of the town, has actually been degraded through establishing a sawmill in the olden days.
01:41So there is a shortage of food for the elephant.
01:44And that's why it led to the baby elephant going into the canteen looking for food.
01:48Three years later, he founded the Responsible Elephant Conservation Trust, RESPECT, to restore harmony between people and wildlife by transforming degraded lands into safe, food-rich corridors for elephants.
02:02What began as a small pilot in Telupid has grown into two major projects in the lower Kinabatangan, a food pasture and a corridor, supported by the Sabah Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry, the Sabah Wildlife Department, and funders like Saraya Corporation Japan and Intrepid Travel.
02:22What respect I think stands out from the rest is when we look at habitat degradation of the elephants, we don't think of not having a roof for the elephant.
02:46In fact, we go further than that, we think of the habitat not having food source.
02:52So we went in and planted food for the elephant through the planting of napier grass and various type of grasses.
02:59And I think that initiative or that kind of approach, it will be the first in Sabah, if not in Malaysia, when it comes to enhancing of habitat for the wildlife.
03:11And within two months, we have heard of elephants come and consume the grass already.
03:16And since then, every two, three months, we have one herd come by.
03:19And we thought, it is workable.
03:22In July, RESPECT recorded seven elephants, followed by 15 in September, showing the herds were returning.
03:29Beyond feeding elephants, the initiative has also brought stability to communities once hit by crop losses by employing farmers to maintain pastures and reduce conflict.
03:40Nine villagers from Kampung Batu Putih and Kampung Bilit now maintain the grass corridors and take pride in seeing elephants near their lands.
03:49The daily task would then include maintaining of those grasses that have already been planted, trimming them.
03:55It is found that grasses, which is about 35 to 40 days old, if you were to trim them at the top, it will then maintain the yield as in it will have higher nutritional value.
04:09The other part is to do new clearings and then to plant new grass cuttings.
04:17So the daily job will be that.
04:18We also include sod blocks or mineral blocks in our initiative.
04:26So they will then go ahead to check those that they have already put up.
04:29If those have run out, then they will replace them with new ones.
04:33RESPECT's conservation plots also serve as outdoor classrooms, where local school children learn about coexistence, sustainability, and the elephant's role in forest balance.
04:43For example, last year during World Elephant Day in August, we invited the school kids from Kampung Bilit to come in here and participate in the grass planting work with us.
04:54Sabah Wildlife Department sent their personnel down to explain to them the importance of having a healthy ecosystem, which includes wildlife such as the elephants.
05:06As a board member of WWF Malaysia, Yee hopes to expand his conservation approach to peninsular Malaysia, particularly along the Greek Highway in Perak, where human-elephant conflicts remain a concern.
05:29For him, conservation starts with rethinking how people see their place in nature.
05:34The biggest misconception will be that we have the right to this world, to this space, that humans have the right to this world, to this space, that every other wildlife, including the elephants, are coming to our area.
05:46They are nuisance to us.
05:48For example, I give you an example.
05:52When you build a road through a forested area, you have elephant crossing the road.
05:58It is not the elephant that crossed the road.
06:02It is the road that crossed the forest.
06:06As respect enters its next phase, Yee measures success in the balance restored between people and wildlife.
06:12His greatest reward is seeing elephants return, forests thrive, and communities take pride in protecting nature.
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