Forest checking Station

This is the forest checking station.. they are all identical just in different places and are where we were staying on the malua forest expedition.

Maliau Basin Bedroom!!!

This is my sleeping quarters from Maliau Basin expedition. We were staying in a camping site but there were no trees for the hammocks so we strung them out on the floor of the gazebo so we could use the mosquito nets but then it rained and the roof was leaking through so we moved mine to underneath the table! It was out of the way and dry but I kept forgetting and sitting up when I woke up!!

Malua Forest Expedition

I have just returned from expedition to Malua Forest Reserve where there are 2 grids of cameras that needed checking, the SD cards changing and new set of fully charged batteries putting in them. The cameras are laid out in grids of 6x6 cameras and are there is 500m between each camera, so the past week and a bit has involved a lot of walking.

We spent 3 days checking the first set of cameras and staying in a field checking station on the edge of the forest next to the palm oil plantations then four days at an identical looking forest checking station but at a different side of the forest by the Kinabatangan river! The stations are little green bungalows on stilts, they have 3 little bedrooms, a main living area, a kitchen, a wet room and a lovely balcony on the front where Naomi and I have sat and watched the lightening and attempted to take photographs!! The first one had a generator so we had electricity at night but at the second one the generators was broken (it has been for 6 months apparently) so it was torch and candle light only after 6.30pm. We also ran out of water at the second station so washing was done in a little shower room on stilts at a house down by the river, the shower used water which was pumped from the river but it had a great view out over the river and the forest so running out of water had its perks!

The forest where the cameras are set is all secondary forest and has been logged in the first grid terrain had lots of vines, roots and thorny plants on the floor, this made finding a month old trail difficult at points but meant my parang-ing skills improved. Some of the cameras are set on the old logging road which was easier going on the legs but very hot out of the canopy cover.  The second grid was more entertaining with the first day spent walking two transects of the grid through knee deep swamp land and crossing a river that was meant to be shallow but actually ended up being waist deep for me but shoulder deep in one part where Rusdi tried to cross (photo to follow!!), the other days were back in the thick forest but with some steep slippery slopes to climb up and down... or crawl and slide!!

Whist we were on expedition the other boys from the team phoned to say there had been more cases of hunters and that some more of or cameras had been stolen after assessing the sites of the missing cameras we returned to Lahad Datu to where our new house is, the new house is on the edge of town on a site with other wildlife staff and researcher’s houses and it means we can walk into town to get shopping and use the internet instead of having to wait until we pass through town in the car, it also means we get ‘mains’ electric, although i’m not sure what is more reliable a generator or Malayan mains!! Last night we had pizza hut for dinner... its only just made it to Lahad Datu along with KFC which serves chicken with rice!!

Currently i’m sat in a cafe in town going through the photos that we collected on our and so far there are no Banteng but some gorgeous photos of a clouded leopard, a sunbear and her little cub, lots of elephants and small calves and lots of very playful baby pigtailed macaques, which think our cameras make great toys.

Maliau Basin Trip

I have spent the past 5 days on expedition in Maliau Basin Conservation Area, this is a huge basin of primary and secondary forest with a buffer zone between the forest and the plantations. MBCA is 7 hours drive from our main base at Tabin, mainly on tarmac roads following the coastline and meandering through the oil palm plantations, which cover any land that doesn't have rainforest on it. On the way we passed some huge lorries full of logs and yards packed with stacks of logs that had all be chopped from the surrounding forest. I was on expedition with Penny and two of her workers Di and Lee, we were checking camera traps that were set in June by teams on another expedition. We managed to capture some great pictures on the cameras and had pictures of 8 Banteng individuals at 3 different sites :D. We also had photos of Malay badgers, banded palm civets and sun bears along with lots of pigs, deer, macaques and some rats! We were staying at a camp site but sleeping on the decking under a big wooden gazebo in our sleeping bags, a bit hard but the sounds of the jungle are amazing. There is an amazing canopy walkway just by our camp which we did on the last evening and made a nice change from hacking our way through the thick jungle floor...I now have my own Parang (jungle knife) and a lovely dirty pair of jungle rubber boots!! My paddling came in useful when we did a day in a blow up raft on the river looking for signs of hunters, in particular their camps along the river. We found loads of signs of the hunters and lots of camps full of their litter but luckily I didnt see any! We are going on another expedition to check two grids of 72 cameras tomorrow so i'll let you know how that goes!

Week 1

I’ve been here over a week now, and i’ve learned that the mosquitoes love me!! Our journey in Borneo began last Thursday we made the 10 hour journey from Kota Kinabalu by jeep over the mountains by Mount Kinabalu and across Sabah to Tabin. The first 7 hours were with Benoit (in charge at Danau Girang- DG) in his car, mainly on tarmac roads but a few gravel roads too, and then we met Penny (Banteng PHd Student) at the DG boat crossing point and she drove the rest of the way to her house in Tabin. Her house is on the nature reserve and is an hour and a half from the nearest town of Lahad Datu. It has 2 bedrooms, an office, a living room, a wet shower room (an actual shower and an actual toilet!) and a kitchen. The house is run completely by a generator, which luckily runs nearly 24/7 here. There is running water in the house which is pumped up from the river and its used for washing and cooking, any drinking water has to be collected from town.

This first week we have just bee settling in and learning how to set up and use the camera traps and GPS. We have been charging batteries for the 2 grids of 72 camera traps in Malua Forest reserve, each camera trap holds 12 batteries so it’s been a never ending process since last Friday to get enough charged ready to go!

I have seen 2 orangutans up in the trees outside the house and a family of bearded pigs out on the road when we went for a walk at the weekend. When we went down to the nearby safari lodges we saw a pair of very rare white crested hornbills and their juvenile feeding in the trees. Today we are heading to Malua forest reserve where the Banteng camera traps are set up at the moment, it’s 3 hours drive from Tabin so another chance to have a good look at the landscape and try and see some more animals. :)