Long Moh, Sarawak — William Tinggang throws a handful of fish food into a glass-clear river.A few seconds pass before movement under the water’s surface begins, and soon a large shoal splashes to the surface, fighting for the food.He waits for the underwater crowd to disperse before hurling the next handful into the river. The splashing resumes.“These fish aren’t for us to eat,” explains Tinggang, who has emerged as a community leader in opposing the logging industry in Long Moh, a village in the Ulu Baram region of Malaysia’s Sarawak state.“We want the populations here to replenish,” he tells Al Jazeera.As part of a system known as Tagang – an Iban language word that translates as “restricted” – residents of Long Moh have agreed there will be no hunting, fishing or cutting of trees in this area.Just a few hours’ flight from Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, Sarawak is one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo that contain some of the oldest rainforests on the planet.It is an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot, and within its Ulu Baram region lies the Nawan Nature Discovery Centre, a community-initiated forest reserve spanning more than 6,000 hectares (23 square miles).The forest in Nawan is dense and thriving; bats skim the surface of the Baram River, palm-sized butterfl …
