Leap Spiral

Can you help Us? This was the question that planted the seed for LEAP in late 2004. Cynthia Ong, a Sabahan then working in the U.S, founded the organization as a response to the call for help from groups at the forefront of ecological conservation in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. Since then, LEAP has worked successfully to increase transparency, build local conservation capacity and develop effective and inclusive conservation partnerships and projects to protect and restore Sabah’s remaining forests and wildlife populations. LEAP has facilitated partnerships between more than 50 local, regional and international partners and leveraged these relationships into more than 20 new and innovative projects and initiatives. This work has included support for community-based conservation initiatives, restoration of heavily degraded lowland forest, establishment of a biobank to finance long-term restoration of hectares of Orang Utan habitat, acquisition of critical parcels of habitat, and successfully opposing through a civil society coalition the construction of Sabah’s first coal-fired power plant. In the process, LEAP has helped foster a new culture of openness, transparency, and collaboration amongst government, industry and civil society.