Conservationist Farina Othman works to protect Borneo’s dwindling elephant population

Farina Othman, a Malaysian academic known as “Borneo’s elephant whisperer,” oversaw the tranquilisation of a wild elephant called Pigtail, fitted it with a tracking collar and took blood samples before the animal recovered. The collar enables her team to warn nearby villages when the elephant approaches, part of a broader effort to establish wildlife corridors linking fragmented forest patches amid expanding oil palm plantations.

Seratu Aatai, the conservation group she leads, educates schoolchildren, distributes pamphlets and employs community wildlife guardians to steer elephants away from homes without harm. In Sabah’s Lower Kinabatangan floodplain, only half of the original 400-sq-km habitat remains for roughly 160 local elephants, leading to frequent human-elephant conflicts such as a recent incursion into three villages. While plantation owners are hesitant to allocate land for corridors, Othman hopes to persuade several estates that coexistence benefits both wildlife and agriculture. Industry voices acknowledge sustainability challenges, noting that financial support from Western buyers is limited.