‘Pulau galau’ includes an area of forest whether wholly or partially surrounded by ‘temuda’ or customary right land purposely reserved by an individual or community through generations and left uncleared, unfarmed or uncultivated as a source of resources for domestic needs of the community.

Specifically, ‘pulau galau’ provides the longhouse community with essential items such as timber for house construction, making coffin for the dead and for building boats, jungles, rattan and other jungle produce. Where ‘pulau galau’ is large, it can become a hunting ground for the community. It is also an important water catchment.

‘Pulau galau’ can be owned communally by one longhouse or more longhouses. It can also be owned individually or by groups of core families, especially pioneers or early groups of families who first opened an area for settlement.

Where ‘pulau galau’ is owned communally, rights to it reside with the longhouse that owns it. People from other outside of the longhouse are not permitted to extract timber or climb fruit trees where exclusive rights to these resources rest with the longhouse that owns the ‘pulau’. Rights to the ‘pulau’ pass down to the descendants of the longhouse as long as they remain in the village or maintain their attachment to it by participating or contributing to the activities of the longhouse.

Where ‘pulau’ is owned by a particular family, rights to it reside with the family members. Other members of the longhouse may collect wild vegetables and uncultivated foodstuffs or cut bamboo, cane and creepers in the ‘pulau’, but not to extract timber or climb fruit trees where the exclusive rights to the resources rest with the family that owns it.

An area is created into ‘pulau’ if it is found to be rich in ‘kayu ban’ (timber), ‘teras’ or ‘belian’ (ironwood), ‘engkerebai’, fruits of which are used to produce textile dye, engkabang and other oil-yielding trees, ‘tekalong’, bark of which is used to make corsages and carrying straps, ‘tapang’ which provides a place for bees to produce honey and other resources such as rattan, fruit trees, palms, etc. It is created into ‘pulau’ to provide the members of the longhouse or village with essential resources for domestic needs.

An area which may not be productive for farming can also be created into a ‘pulau galau’. Such an area is usually made up of rugged terrain, and may contain useful timbers and other resources. Normally such an area is a useful water catchment.

‘Pulau galau’ is also known among the Ibans in the Kota Samarahan, Sibu, Kapit, Mukah and Miri Divisions and other Iban areas of Sarawak as ‘pulau papan or ‘pulau ban’ or ‘pulau kerapa’ or ‘pulau sentubong’ depending on its purposes and uses.