. The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific. For management purposes, the PFE is divided broadly between protection forests for control of watersheds, and production forests for timber production. In Sabah 28 protection forest reserves are gazetted, covering 9 per cent of the PFE. In Sarawak 'protected forests' cover about 30 per cent of the PFE (Forest Department, 1987), but they are set aside by local administrations and do not have the same legal status as the protection reserves in Sabah or in Peninsular Malaysia. A small number of communal forests have also been est
. The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific. For management purposes, the PFE is divided broadly between protection forests for control of watersheds, and production forests for timber production. In Sabah 28 protection forest reserves are gazetted, covering 9 per cent of the PFE. In Sarawak 'protected forests' cover about 30 per cent of the PFE (Forest Department, 1987), but they are set aside by local administrations and do not have the same legal status as the protection reserves in Sabah or in Peninsular Malaysia. A small number of communal forests have also been established for the use of local communities. In Sarawak, where a uniform system was once used for logging, it is now policy to log lowland rain forests selectively on a cycle of 25-30 years; in peat swamp forest, a uniform system has operated on a 45- year cycle since the 1950s. Selective poisoning of unwanted trees was practised over 330 sq. km in Sarawak (liberation thinning), but has now been abandoned as impractical and undesirable. Sabah still uses a modified uniform system, originally on a 70 to 80 year rotation, but this was changed in the mid-1970s when felling rates were increased to produce greater revenue for the state. As a result, the area of undisturbed forest in Sabah was halved between 1973 and 1983. By 1980, essentially all of Sabah's productive forests had either been logged or hcensed for logging (FAO/UNEP, 1981). Timber production there peaked at 12 million cu. m in 1983 and is now declining. Commercial yields have been very high, up to 90 cu. m per ha, only exceeded in the Philippines. In Sabah the recent freeze by the government on all future concession applications is an mdica- tion of the high level of concern that the timber resources have been too quickly exploited. In Sarawak, early logging concentrated on peat swamp forests, which were all licensed by 1970. By 1978, most timber was coming from lowland rain forests, and about 60 per cent of these forest
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