This article presents an overview of the Native Customary Rights to forests and its role in protecting the future of native people of Sarawak, Malaysia. The native people have had a long history and strong relationship with their forests. Existing documents and studies have been critically reviewed and analyzed in order to elaborate the Native Customary Rights which are critical to the native people of this region. To have a better understanding on Native Customary Rights, it is important to answer three related questions: (i) Who is a native of Sarawak, (ii) What is 'custom', and (iii) What is the nature of 'rights'? The roles of Native Customary Rights for economic, political or social reasons, operate through informal rules embedded in the natives' customs and traditions. These rules have never been codified into formal laws because the adat system merely functions to manage the human relations which are tied to culture thus making it difficult to codify the culture into laws. It is evident that there are several issues underlying the development of Native Customary Rights: (i) Native Customary Rights are considered as inferiority to those of the State, (ii) the issue of over-shadowing of traditional laws by the colonial rule and the current statutory laws and, (iii) projects and land schemes involving the Native Land. It is understood that the challenges of promoting Native Customary Rights are daunting task; however, the constitutional laws need to carefully revise to provide a better future for the natives.

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The tourism sector in Sabah is rapidly developing as the state has high biodiversity resources. The state needs to diversify its natural tourism destinations to increase the number of tourists because tourism is one of the sector that give some contribution to the economic state. Segaliud Lokan Forest Reserve which located in Sandakan district is a newly discovered conservation area that has the potential to be a natural tourism area as this area is rich in biodiversity of flora and fauna as well as attractive landscapes. The objective of the study is to identify the natural resources found in the SLFR that can be the tourist attraction. The Criteria for Assessing Natural Tourism Potential based on National Ecotourism Plan of Malaysia (Guideline for Sabah State) was used in this study. This study shows that the SLFR area has the potential to be a nature tourism attraction but recommends to have some management mechanism in place to precede any development of tourism activity.

The study was conducted to examine the local community's acceptance towards mangrove forest as a sustainable tourism product in Kampung Rampayan Laut and Kampung Nanamun, Kota Belud, Sabah, Malaysia. In addition to the above, it is also to determine the level of knowledge of the local community on the importance of mangrove forests as well as to determine the level of willingness of the local community to participate in mangrove forest management. These two specific sites were selected due to the increasing tourists influx in the area for mangrove forest river-cruise and fireflies watching. Purposive sampling technique was used which involved distribution of questionnaires to 150 respondents from both Kampung Rampayan Laut and Kampung Nanamun, which is about 10% from the actual population size. Likert scale was used in the questionnaire form, ranging from one which represents strongly disagree to five which represents strongly agree for each item to measure respondents’ level of acceptance, knowledge, and willingness to participate in mangrove forest management. The study found that the level of local communities acceptance is high which supports the efforts to make mangrove forest as a sustainable tourism product. This study also found that local communities have the basic knowledge on the importance of mangrove forests to the ecosystems and are willing to be involved in mangrove management. This study has identified the community’s acceptance towards mangrove forest as a sustainable tourism product through their perception of benefits acquired through mangrove forest tourism which could be used as a baseline data for wetland resource management to ensure sustainability.