BORNEO

Bio 646, Summer 2023

My third Earth Expeditions adventure was to the island of Borneo. We (Lisa Bastedo, Brittany Bauer, Lauren Belcher, Kat Bell, Megan Burkhart, Lizzie Curcuru, Heidi Edwards, Theole Feuillet, Logan Hamilton, Becca Lamb, May McGraw, Lauren Moscar, Selina Niblett, Elyse Rankey, Whitney, Roman Joe Sarvary, Tabitha LaRose, our instructors Sharon Glaeser and Crystal Schalmo and me) were able to look at primate conservation through the lens of a tourist, as field researchers and based in a community based organization. My summing up is that it was hot, always damp and magic. So, I of course would like to go back. My page includes thoughts as well as photos and scans from my field journal that I kept on the journey.

Days -1 and 0. Pre-EE adventure. Hiking in the rainforest. Communing with orangutans and gibbons. Avoiding macaques. Exploring and acclimating.

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I arrive a few days early to Sandakan and stay at the Sepilok Forest Edge Resort. It is beautiful and I am glad to have a few days to recover after the flight(s). I go on a very long hike through the Rainforest Discovery Center. They tell me that the best thing to remember is to avoid macaques (I see many). They do not tell me to bring gallons and gallons of water. I am very hot and walk for miles, but also see amazing things. One of the most magical parts was being in the forest surrounded by gibbons. They were pretty close to me, but I did not see them. We did see gibbons later, when we were out tracking orangutans in Sukau, they are pretty elusive. On the next day, Brittany arrives and we meet up with Kat and Heidi. We go to the Proboscis Monkey sancutary and take a night hike at the RDC. We see many wonderful things including a slow loris. I am extremely impressed by how well the guides can find things.

Day 1: Sepilok. Primate Conservation through the lens of a tourist. Sun bear conservation, Orangutan Center. Flying Squirrels!

Today is our first full day for the course. We start out by dropping our bags off at the Sepilok Bed and Breakfast where we will stay tonight. We then start a day of activities that we might do as tourists. In fact, it will be my third visit to both the Orangutan Center and the Rainforest Discovery Center. We also go to meet Dr. Wong at the Sun Bear Conservation Center. At the end of the night we are on the canopy walkways in the RDC and a Giant Red flying squirrel flies right over us. Elyse gets it on video. I love squirrels. There are so many different species of both squirrels and flying things here due to the canopy. In Borneo there are many emergent trees so the canopy is not the same consistent height. Flying animals evolved to take advantage of the breaks in the canopy to be able to travel long distances between trees. We saw flying lizards and snakes as well.

My first Tiger Leech (Haemadipsa picta) in Borneo! I get several other ones. To take them off you just roll them up and flick them away.

A Sun Bear (Helarctos malayanus) in a tree at the Sun Bear Conservation Center, Sepilok, Sabah, Malaysia.

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A Red Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista petaurista) flies right over us! Video by Elyse Rankey.

Day 2: Transfer to Danau Girang Field Centre. Going up the Kinabatangan River. Exploring after a rainstorm. Primate conservation through the lens of a field researcher.

We leave Sepilok in the morning for our journey up the Kinabatangan River. We catch the boats in Bata Pituh. There is a small store there that sells snacks, T-shirts and some souvenirs. We spend a lot of time on the river throughout the entire trip. It is the main way of getting around for the small communities on the river and for the Field Center we are going to. The banks of the river change based on river flooding and water levels. We probably see fewer crocodiles this time because the water level is pretty high. There are sections of trails that are not passable because there is water. We stay at the Danau Girang Field Centre. For our first day of arrival, we are assigned rooms and then meet back at the main part of the station. There is a massive rain storm, but afterwards we go out to investigate possible inquiry questions. The rules of the station include, Don't swim in the river. Wear life jackets. Don't feed or pick up anything. Stay on the trails. Go with another person on all but the main trail.

The trails all look like this. The main trail is the one that is paved. We are allowed to walk on that one alone. The rest of them we need to be with someone else and to sign in and out when we go out. they are marked with paint on the trees and you do need to pay attention to the markings in order to stay on the trail. We also are usually wearing rubber boots and sometimes leech socks. Also, we are usually looking up because there is always something great to see. There are so many macaques along all the trails. And also sometimes monitor lizards and snakes.

Day 3: Field Station. Bird Boat. Hiking the trails. Continue to avoid macaques, which is a challenge. Cat survey at night.

This is the main field station where we have all of our meals, discussion and classroom time. Every day, twice a day, the station switches from solar power to the generator power and we have to unplug everything plugged into the wall. At 11 pm the generator switches off until the morning and there are no fans or electricity. This actually was a really nice time of the night because we can hear all the night jungle noises. We go out late this day on a cat survey and get to explore the plantation. In order to get there we first take a boat across the river, then we walk across some forest, then we have to cross a plank bridge that is mostly under water. The water goes up over my boots. I then spend the next few hours walking around the plantation in the dark looking for leopard cats. We walked for so long, found one cat because they are amazing at finding them and then retraced our path across the plank, through the forest and back to the boat. I got stung by a night insect. It was a great day.

Macaques are everywhere! They jump over our heads while we walk on the paths.

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Day 4: Field Station. Butterfly inquiry data collection. We (DGFC) find elephants and we watch them crossing the river! Frog walk

Everyone is excited on day 4, like there is something special. We are all supposed to do our morning activities, but everyone is going to go out on the boats in the afternoon. Brittany, Lisa and I start our inquiry question. We walk on trails closer to and further from water and look at the species diversity and abundance of butterflies. We count a lot of butterflies. We also decide that probably the canopy cover matters more than the closeness to the water, mostly because everything seems pretty close to the water. We have to turn around on one trail because it is flooded. We find elephant tracks filled with water and I nearly fall in. All in all a great adventure. One of Project Dragonfly's core tenets is inquiry. Getting to come up with a small question to investigate and then actually do is one of my favorite parts of the EE experience. This one was no different. I have a new appreciation for butterflies and have continued to notice them on my return home.

But in the afternoon, it continues. We all go out on the boats. The DGFC staff have heard that there are elephants! We track them because I think one of them is collared? We end up finding them and they are spending time going up and down the river bank. One mama and baby cross the river. The mama swims just downstream to keep the baby from moving away from her. They cross together and climb out on the other side. We watch them for a long time. At night, the frog research survey is cancelled because the elephants moved into that area of the plantation, so we do a frog walk on the trails. We find many species of frogs plus some really cool millipedes.

Day 5: Field Station. Cat tracking. Find the orangutans! Primate boat, night boat. A SIX primate day!

We spend the morning tracking leopard cats with Amanda. This involves crossing the river, walking through the strip of forest, and then crossing the irrigation ditch on the plank. She does this every day. The water goes in over my boots again and this time the plank swings and I decide it is better to jump than fall. So I am wet up to my knees. Later, I find a sign warning of the crocodiles. Still, it is possible to track cats this way. We find the one we are looking for pretty quickly because she has a baby so has not been moving to far from the tree she has been in. It is very fun to get to listen to the sounds from the radio. Brittany and I walk purposefully. We also watch people in the plantation harvesting palm fruits and we see water buffalo, they are supposed to be working? But they are mostly resting in the ditches.

Obviously I am an amazing leopard cat tracker, you would not know that I was so hot and I had to pour the actual water out of my boots.

In the afternoon we go out on the trails because people keep saying that they have found the orangutans. Whitney and Logan tell us that they left an X on the trail. We walk out, find the end of the trail where it is flooded and decide we should turn around, because crocodiles. We see a monitor lizard instead. On the way back, Lisa finds the X, good thing she was looking this time, because I walked right past it. Right by a tree that we had looked at on the way out, but decided was not orangutan. And there it was, definitely watching us. That afternoon, primate boat. We see Dollar bird, Myna bird, Silver langur, Swift, Crested Serpent Eagle, Long tailed Macaque, Pig Tailed Macaque, Proboscis Monkey, White crowned hornbill and logodiles. That night, night boat, We see a Malay civet, crocodile, fish owl, Pigtail Macaque and a Slow Loris. The slow loris makes this a 6 primate day. I had one before, but at the Orangutan Research Center where they were feeding them. This one was excellent. Also, the boats are lovely, there is no crossing planks and you get to be much cooler because you are not in the jungle.

The orangutan!

Photo by Whitney Roman.

Day 6: Field Station. Pangolin tracking. Last day at DGFC. We pack and clean up to leave tomorrow.

Today we track Pangolins. Lizzie and I are out with Maca and Alut for this research activity. One of the pangolin research studies is about the combining of sleeping sites for Pangolins and bats and the subsequent spread of infectious disease like COVID19. The pangolins use a different radio system than the cats, so they can tell them apart, and also we have to get closer to them to locate them. We start on the river, listening for the beeps, turning the antennae in all directions, we switch between two signals, for Lisa and Maya. Once we find one of them, we land the boat on the bank, scramble out and then walk through the forest, with some machete help, until we get closer and closer to the beeps. They get louder and we turn down the distance as we walk. I am sure that I am not explaining it completely, and also we do find both of them. One is in a new tree so we mark it and take a GPS location. The other is in a known tree surrounded by edible ferns. We had them for dinner last night. I try a raw one.

We are packing up to leave DGFC tomorrow in the morning. I spend some time on this last day walking on the main trail by myself, because this is the only trail we are supposed to be on alone. It connects the dorm we are staying in to the main field station to the dock by the river. There are especially a lot of macaques between the dorm and the field station. They make sounds at us as they jump over our heads.

Life at Danau Girang Field Center

This is where we are living. We are in dorm rooms that have 4-5 people. There is a screened area to leave wet clothes and shoes, and outside clothes lines to leave really wet clothes. This in between area also helps to keep mosquitoes out. The power turns off at 11, and afterwards, there are no fans, but it is amazing to listen to the forest.

This is the main reserach station. There is a large room we use for eating and as a classroom and meeting space. There is a lab and a few offices. There is also a library, which is the only room that has air conditioning that we have access to. It is nice to go in there for a little while to cool down, and also, it is sometimes better to just stay the same temperature. The food is delicious and there is always lots.

A Typical Day at Danau Girang Field Center

This page from my journal tries to explain a typical day. We are out with the researchers on their projects in the mornings and evenings. They let us help them, and also they would be so much faster on their own. It is fun to get to gather a little data, and it makes me so impressed with field researchers who spend years gathering this data. We hear many talks by them describing their research including, Regrow Borneo, PYT projects on Butterflies, Frogs and Tree Shelters, Leopard Cat locations and prey availability, plans to monitor and track the illegal wildlife trade, heavy metals in carnivores, sustainable palm oil plantations, populations of monitor lizards and the role of the pangolin in the emergence of SARS-CoV2 and other viruses. So much learning! These talks show so clearly how committed and connected all of the researchers here are to conserving the forest and wildlife here in Borneo. They spend every day out collecting data and then piecing together the stories to figure out what matters for conservation. One of the main themes of the projects seems to be comparing species richness and diversity in the palm plantations versus in the forest and also what might help the plantations have more sustainable practices that will support the wildlife and help to maintain the livlihood of the people who depend on the income from the palm oil. The long term dedication of the researchers here is amazing. And also, they are just as excited as we are to find the elephants and the orangutans. Palm oil is an industry that has a lot of problems, and it also is an important part of the global commodity production of oil. We are not going to get away from this. I think that the research here on how to support more sustainable solutions is what we need to do (Santika, et al., 2019).

Day 7: Sukau/Hutan. Introduction to the community: games and dancing. Primate conservation through the lens of a community based organization. River boat cruise with so many proboscis monkeys (plus obviously, macaques). Host families!

We travel back down the river from DGFC to Bata Pitah and then drive to Sukau where we are going to meet up with our homestay families and learn more about the community based conservation organization Hutan. We are greeted with an amazing lunch that the whole community came together to create for us. We also play some games, like one with a spinning top and learn a couple of line dances. They are in preparation for the party on the last night. There is a massive rainstorm, just like there is almost every afternoon. Afterwards we go out on a river cruise through a small tributary of the Kinabatangan. There are orangutan bridges across the river becuase they are not very good swimmers and it allows them to have access to more open habitat. We only see macaques crossing the river.

Bam greets us when we arrive at his house, the main community center for the Sukau Village Homestay. Right behind there is a nursery to grow plants for the reforestation projects. They are used to reforest areas and currently to create wildlife corridors, important for fragmented forests (Ancrenaz et al, 2021).

Isabel gives us an overview of the work of Hutan and the Kinabatangan Orangutan Rehabilitation Programme. They have been tracking orangutans for decades and have learned some major differences between the primates living in the plantations vs in less disturbed habitats, as well as learning how to think about how to rehabilitate and release orangutans (Sherman et al., 2020).

On the river cruise, we see a lot of proboscis monkeys. They are spectacular jumpers and like to live near the water. When we are out in the evening we see them gather in trees that are more isolated from others (Feilan and Marshall, 2014). I am amazed that they are able to sleep just along the branches.

Day 8: Sukau/Hutan. Reforestation with Hutan. Machetes. Elephant team. Night Market.

We meet up with the reforestation team in a section of forest that used to be palm plantation and is now being reforested to create a wildlife corridor to connect two other pieces of forest. Inside this section there are still palm trees and there are also many other trees that the Hutan team has been planting. They have found several species in the plots that they did not plant, so that means that wildlife is spreading seeds and more trees are growing here.

Lisa and I with the tree we have planted.

In the afternoon we hear about the elephant team and the work they are doing to educate the community about elephants as well as to protect human places from elephants and overall to decrease human wildlife conflict overall.

It is raining a little, but it stops enough for us to learn how to light the elephant cannon. It is so loud, and also we are holding still, it is light and there are no elephants. The elephant team will use this tool while running in the dark at full speed towards elephants to help turn them away from people.

We go to the night market at night. Lisa, Brittany and Heidi's host mom takes them early and all around the market. Everyone wants to take pictures with them. Once the rest of us get there, they want to take pictures with us too. There are plenty of foods to try including lots of deserts, stalls selling all kinds of clothes, vegetables, and medicines.

We find fuzzy hair ties and many people get them. I still have mine and it is a good memory of this night together.

Day 9: Sukau/Hutan. Orangutan Research Team, phenology and tracking. No swiftlets which is sad.

This is one of the Orangutan research team showing us a fruit that orangutans like to eat it. We try it too. It tastes pretty good. I might not pick it every day.

This fig has an old orangutan nest in it. The team has found an orangutan here. We can see it through binoculars, but have a hard time seeing it through our cameras.

We also talk about phenology with this team. They can identify all of the tree species here (hundreds) as well as identifying if there are fruits or sprouts as a current food source.

These teams have been tracking orangutans for 25 years through the Kinabatangan orangutan project (KOCP). They are out there keeping track of what the orangutans are doing every 3 minutes (Lackman-Ancrenaz et al., 2001). The team is pretty big when we are out there because they want our large group to be safe. The commitment and connection this team has for the wildlife and the desire to protect and maintain the forest is inspiring. One of Dragonfly's core tenets is community connection. The Hutan organization is an awesome example of this. I ask a lot of the people we are spending time with why they do this work and they all say because of their connection to the community and their desire to protect the wildlife in the area. The ability to see connection and real life community based organizations is a unique and rare experience. Hutan as an organization is truly taking the interest and desire of the local people and channeling that into conservation, true community based conservation (Berkes, 2007).

Day 10: Kinabatangan Riverside Lodge. Coluga. Last boat ride with an epic rainstorm.

For the last day we move to the Kinabatangan Riverside Lodge due to COVID in our group. It is very nice here at the lodge. We are in rooms with 2 people, we have hot showers, there is a pool(!) and plentiful food. I am sad that we are not able to participate in the planned last day. And, our last day is also ok. We do our Community Based Conservation talk and a last conversation about our IAP's. Then we have a final optional boat ride. We leave and it is beautiful. On our way back we watched a storm build. We got ready, and then there was an amazing and huge rainstorm. You know it is going to be big when your boat driver stops the boat to put on his rain gear, it was a very large and very fast moving storm. I for some reason had my poncho. I used it to keep my journal and Brittany's camera dry. The rest of us was sacrificied to the rain.

Day 11: Transfer to airport for return home

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain

This trip was a chance to continue to learn and grow and to push my comfort zone. It is so special how much time we get to be together, living and working, struggling and being human together. I love how much this matters and I love how I have been able to bring the connections I have made back to other parts of my life. I think that my passion for travel was cemented even more on this journey. I did not know how much I would enjoy solo travel, and also I spent an entire day in the airport in Malaysia. That liminal day was one I will long remember.

Borneo: Video Journal Walkthrough

This is a video to my whole journal with some commentary. It is ALMOST done! And also I wanted to post it so that it would be included here. Three minutes long.

The view from my homestay in Sukau. We would eat dinner on this porch. There is a little bird in that cage and a cat who watches us eat.

Borneo: Synthesis Paper

For my synthesis paper I was in the group looking at Community Based Conservation. My synthesis paper looked at ways communities have integrated home stays as a way to obtain income. This was an interesting connection because when we were in Sukau we actually stayed with homestay families integrated into the Hutan group.

Title: Homestays as an Integral Component of Community Based Conservation

Citations

Ancrenaz, M., Oram, F., Nardiyono, N., Silmi, M., Jopony, M. E., Voigt, M., ... & Meijaard, E. (2021). Importance of small forest fragments in agricultural landscapes for maintaining orangutan metapopulations. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 4, 560944.

Berkes, F. (2007). Community-based conservation in a globalized world. Proceedings of the National academy of sciences, 104(39), 15188-15193.

Feilen, K. L., & Marshall, A. J. (2014). Sleeping site selection by proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. American journal of primatology, 76(12), 1127-1139.

Lackman-Ancrenaz, I., Ancrenaz, M., & Saburi, R. (2001). The Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project (KOCP). In Proceedings of a Conference on the Apes: Challenges for the 21st Century (pp. 262-265). Brookfield Zoo.

Santika, T., Wilson, K. A., Budiharta, S., Law, E. A., Poh, T. M., Ancrenaz, M., ... & Meijaard, E. (2019). Does oil palm agriculture help alleviate poverty? A multidimensional counterfactual assessment of oil palm development in Indonesia. World Development, 120, 105-117.

Sherman, J., Ancrenaz, M., & Meijaard, E. (2020). Shifting apes: Conservation and welfare outcomes of Bornean orangutan rescue and release in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Journal for Nature Conservation, 55, 125807.

Links

Danau Girang Field Centre. https://www.danaugirang.com.my/

Hutan. https://www.hutan.org.my/

Orangutan Research and Rehabilitation Center. https://www.orangutan-appeal.org.uk/

Rainforest Discovery Center. https://rainforest-discovery-centre.business.site/ This tourist site has better pictures and descriptions of the RDC https://www.mysabah.com/wordpress/rainforest-discovery-center-rdc-sandakan/

Sukau Village Viewstay. https://sukauvillageviewstay.com/

Sun Bear Conservation Center. https://www.bsbcc.org.my/

BORNEO

Borneo: Video Journal Walkthrough

Borneo: Synthesis Paper

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