Helicopters in Sibu

Helicopters are nothing new to Sibu.

During the Confrontation, Sibu saw a lot of action and the King George V1 Grounds was used as a landing pad.

At the height of the timber boom, some companies even used helicopters to harvest good timber from Kapit and other hillier regions of Sarawak.

The Rascom in later years continued to use helicopters for their exercises.

The Hornbill Skyways had a few helicopters for commercial uses and the local politicians, especially the Chief Minister, love to fly with helicopters.

Helicopter harvesting of Timber

In Sarawak this method of harvesting is not intended to replace the existing ground-based crawler tractor system completely. The volume of logs lifted out by helicopters is very small.

 The gentle and undulating forest areas will still be worked by tractors incorporating reduced impact logging (RIL) procedures. However, harvesting of the hill mixed dipterocarp forests in Sarawak is progressing towards the interior regions where the terrain is steep and more difficult.

The potential or opportunity for helicopter harvesting lies in these areas. In such terrain, tractor harvesting with RIL procedures is less effective (particularly in reducing stream sedimentation) and is presently difficult to implement for the following reasons:

(a) Effective area for harvesting is reduced considerably.
(b) Lack of trained and committed manpower in the timber industry.
(c) Capacity building of Forest Department staff to carry out supervision of RIL for sustainable forest management has not been completed yet.

Notwithstanding the high cost of operation, the use of helicopters will definitely improve the sustainability of the forest and at the same time preserve its environmental values.

In 1993, WTK invested in helicopters.

It is a very expensive venture and method of harvesting timber.