THE LAKE BEFORE
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THE LAKE AFTER
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The Model Ecologically Sustainable Community Tourism Project (MESCOT) is a grassroots conservation organization in the village of Batu Putih along the Kinabatangan River in Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia. Their activities involve the local communities through a Homestay Program, community based ecotourism activities as well as forest conservation, lake restorations and rehabilitation projects in the Lower Kinabatangan.
Supported by the the Abraham Foundation, a team from MESCOT has been able to manually clear a lake infested with a aquatic fern called Salvinia. “The area is now BEAUTIFUL and ALIVE (no longer stagnant and dying), and rich with wildlife - fish life returning in abundance leading to bird life coming back in abundance: oriental darters, purple herons, storm storks, etc. everywhere.” witnessed Cynthia Ong from LEAP.
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Together with the Surin Government, The Elephant Nature Foundation has committed to change the fate of elephants in Thailand’s Surin Province. There are 300 elephants registered in Surin, a large numbe of which rely on street begging for income, which reduces an elephant’s life expectancy by at least 50%.
The Surin Government approached Elephant Nature Foundation to help develop sustainable elephant-based tourism in Surin and build an elephant sanctuary. With support from The Abraham Foundation, ENF is committed to establishing sustainably managed elephant tourism as an alternative to street begging and other forms of tourism such as circuses and elephant rides. The goal is to have families of elephants freely roaming in natural habitat while their mahouts are provided with a steady income. This income serves to replace the income they previously made street begging and thereby encourage them to stay at the park. The Abraham Foundation has also sponsored houses to be built on the premises for the mahouts and their families to live in. The impact this project will have for elephant conservation is huge. The Surin Government has set aside over 2000 acres of land, which is enough to maintain a breeding population of about 60 elephants. The Surin Project aims to save the Asian elephant from extinction and give future generations of elephants a life worth living.
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