Roziah Jelali has a tip or two on catching a turtle poacher: carrying a pair of binoculars and having patience in spades are key to doing the job well. The 36-year-old Malaysian volunteer ranger once spent three months in Sabah tracking a man whom she suspected of illegally capturing protected turtles. Once thriving off the azure seas of Omadal Island in the Malaysian state, many turtles had been hunted down, killed and sold for their meat, according to conservation experts. Recounting the 2023...

A Thai government proposal to charge export duties on durians, a major cash crop, could raise prices for the fruit in China – its primary market – along with the quality, analysts said. Thailand’s draft bill to establish a fund for research and “sustainable” development of the durian sector would include the collection of fees, the government’s public relations department said last month. Southeast Asian media outlets and agricultural publications have tipped the export duty to be as high as 2...

On Facebook, public hospitals in Malaysia’s Bornean states have been rolling out “Selamat Datang” [welcome] banner posts to embrace medical staff reporting for duty. Tawau Hospital on Sabah’s east coast recently published a group photograph welcoming newly arrived medical officers. Kinabatangan Hospital posted similar banners hailing arrivals across various departments, while in neighbouring Sarawak, Kapit Hospital accompanied its greeting with a portrait of a newly arrived doctor. But behind...