On Sunday 6 March 2011, I visited the farmers' market in town just to check out the local produce as usual. As I was reaching the end of the line of stalls, I was left dumbfounded to find a middle-aged man sitting nonchalantly on the tarmac selling...horrors of horrors...Rafflesia buds! Not wanting to alarm the man, I posed as an interested weekend tourist who didn't know any better to fish for information and guess what - the flower buds were sourced from the Rafflesia site in Ulu Dong, the current conservation candidate site in Raub!!!
Besides efforts from the limited manpower of the Forestry Department, the locals seem uninterested to conserve their natural habitat and this is where NGOs need to play a bigger and more active role. I hope MNS is paying attention and taking actions in the near future. I pledge to write to the Director of the Malaysian Forestry Department and MNS to solicit their immediate attention. Sale of Rafflesia flower buds has stopped for awhile now but a long period of silence at the site has definitely emboldened the looters...researches by some local universities are on going but I am sad to say that it merely never go beyond sampling, sampling and sampling and the continuous activities only serve to further tax the already heavily embattled site...
Besides efforts from the limited manpower of the Forestry Department, the locals seem uninterested to conserve their natural habitat and this is where NGOs need to play a bigger and more active role. I hope MNS is paying attention and taking actions in the near future. I pledge to write to the Director of the Malaysian Forestry Department and MNS to solicit their immediate attention. Sale of Rafflesia flower buds has stopped for awhile now but a long period of silence at the site has definitely emboldened the looters...researches by some local universities are on going but I am sad to say that it merely never go beyond sampling, sampling and sampling and the continuous activities only serve to further tax the already heavily embattled site...
The mindless local selling these buds simply cut off the roots to extract the buds instead of plucking, albeit killing off the host and the parasite (Rafflesia is a parasitic plant).
Rosy salmon coloured bud, indicating freshly extracted flower buds within a week of blooming.
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