The Sabah government has unveiled a new strategic plan of action to further enhance the management and conservation efforts under the Heart of Borneo (HoB) initiative. The transboundary initiative, launched under a joint declaration by the governments of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia in 2007, seeks to protect the main part of the Borneo island where forests remain intact, but are increasingly threatened. Speaking at the opening of the HoB symposium, Sabah chief minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor said that HoB has provided Sabah with a framework for state-wide sustainable development, and also enabled better coordination between the conservation programmes of the three countries involved which share the 425,124 km2 large Borneo rainforest. Since the inception of the initiative, Sabah has gazetted 1.9 million hectares of Totally Protected Areas (TPAs) or about 26.4 per cent of its land mass.

Source: The Star