CLOUDED LEOPARD CONSERVATION IN BORNEO Anthony Giordano, Texas Tech University & LifeScape International Siew Te Wong, Borneo Sun Bear Conservation Centre Mohammed Azlan, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak Laurentius Ambu, Director, Sabah Wildlife Department Summary Some of the last intact rainforests in Southeast Asia are found in Borneo. Yet most of the national parks there are too small and isolated to protect large, wide-ranging animals from accelerating logging and climate change. We are working to protect corridors of habitat that will link the existing parks into a connected landscape capable of conserving the spectacular and rare clouded leopard, as well as general biodiversity, in the rainforests of northern Borneo. This project brings together Malaysian and Indonesian citizens, scientists, and government agencies, as well as national and international conservation organizations, to help protect this last tropical Asian wilderness. PROBLEMS BEING ADDRESSED The forests of northern Borneo some of the last intact wilderness in Southeast Asia. But the isolated national parks of this region do not offer sufficient protection for large, wide-ranging species such as elephants, rhinoceros, and big cats in the face of mounting industrial logging and the increasingly prevalent droughts induced by climate change. The loss of these animals would affect the entire ecosystem and also impoverish the culture and livelihood of local people that have co-existed with them for millennia. The largest cat and the most wide-ranging mammal in these rainforests is the clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi). Clouded leopards are already listed as “Vulnerable” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and are on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES). Yet despite their importance and endangerment, the two species of clouded leopard, N. nebulosa (mainland Southeast Asia) and N. diardi (Sumatra and Borneo), remain the least-known big cats in the world. A landscape capable of supporting even the rare and widely-wandering clouded leopard will also afford protection to the myriad smaller and less-mobile organisms in the rainforest. Clouded leopards are thus an “umbrella species” whose conservation serves as a tool for protecting other organisms as well. We are working to establish protected forest corridors to link seven existing national parks into a network of sanctuaries that will sustain clouded leopards as well as general biodiversity. To ensure that these corridors are effective, we need to know what types of habitat the animals move through as well as how local and national policies affect the human land tenure system. We use two approaches, studying clouded leopard ecology and habitat use with camera traps while simultaneously bringing disparate stakeholders together to agree on the final habitat linkage plan. We employ and train local villagers in the data collection techniques so that they become participants in the future monitoring efforts needed to ensure the long-term persistence of clouded leopards and biodiversity in this region. We will also train local students in wildlife monitoring in order to build long-term technical capacity for conservation. GOALS OF THE PROJECT We focus on seven protected areas that straddle the core of northern Borneo, as well as several unprotected forests in between. This project should generate four main products. First is a roadmap for the legal protection of a network of habitat corridors specifically designed to protect a rare and wide-ranging umbrella species, the clouded leopard, and its remaining wilderness habitat in northern Borneo. Second is a quantitative understanding of how clouded leopard distribution and abundance are affected by habitat disturbance; thus we can suggest ways in which unavoidable future economic developments in the region be conducted to have minimum influence on animal movement and persistence. Third, by training local villagers and students in wildlife monitoring techniques we generate technical capacity and provide a sense of ownership in the conservation project among local communities. Finally, we will have established a tradition of communication and cooperation among diverse stakeholders who are not currently accustomed to working together; this will likely prove crucial to the long-term success of conservation in the region. PROGRESS TO DATE In January 2010 we began camera trapping in Maliau Basin Conservation Area. This is one of the last pristine lowland rainforests in all of Southeast Asia, and information collected here can thus serve as a baseline against which to compare other, more disturbed sites. We set up 26 camera stations, stratified between primary forest and selectively logged forest. In May-June 2010, after receiving research permits for Sarawak, Malaysia, we set up 20 camera stations each in Mulu National Park and Pulong Tau National Park. Neither of these parks has had any systematic camera-trap surveys. Data from these cameras will be retrieved in late 2010. On this same trip we replaced the memory cards and batteries in the cameras in Maliau Basin. The cameras  worked very well and recorded images of 12 species of
carnivore, including 42 sequences of clouded leopard as well as marbled cat,
flat-headed cat, leopard cat, and the extremely little-known Hose's civet. The cameras also detected several sequences
of banteng and the Bornean pygmy subspecies of the Asian elephant –both of
these herbivores are of critical conservation concern in Malaysia.
One of the most exciting aspects of the project is the unexpected enthusiasm with which it has been greeted by park managers. The project may facilitate the initiation of long-term wildlife monitoring programs in Mulu National Park and Maliau Basin Conservation Area, which will be some of the first such programs in all of Borneo. In 2011 we plan to expand work to several additional sites in Sarawak as well as, pending permit approval, Kalimantan and Brunei. |
