Tag - Environment

A female Borneo pygmy elephant recently fitted with a satellite collar is expected to become her herd’s ambassador in determining important migration corridors between forested areas currently cut off by development, including the Sandakan-Lahad Datu road.

The collar on the 1.9-metre tall elephant captured in the Segaliud Lokan Forest Reserve is expected to transmit data on possible further migration into the Pin Supu Forest Reserve, or from the Lower Kinabatangan region to Segaliud Lokan.

Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) Conservation and Research head Raymond Alfred said the estimated 290 to 310 elephants in the Kinabatangan region are currently separated from the main population in central Sabah, including the Segaliud Lokan Forest Reserve, by a main road.

Alfred said the solution to habitat fragmentation lies in the creation of a network of wildlife “corridors” that link forest reserves.

“This collaring activity is one of the components of the Mega Biodiversity Corridor programme initiated by BCT, which aims to enhance forest ecosystem connectivity and ecological corridors within key habitats of the Bornean elephant and Orang Utan in Sabah.

“The Mega Biodiversity Corridor will allow elephants and Orang Utan to safely migrate, access food sources and establish crucial genetic links between populations,” Alfred said in a joint statement issued by BCT and the Sabah Wildlife Department here today.

The elephant named “Segaliud” is estimated to be between 25 and 35 years old. She was observed to be physically healthy and was in lactation with a calf of around five to six months old.

The collaring exercise is the first to be carried out by BCT and the Sabah Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Rescue Unit in collaboration with KTS Plantation Sdn Bhd.

Alfred said there was a need to develop a long-term action plan to address the issue of fragmentation.

“Steps may include land purchase and the securing and restoration of riparian reserves (at river banks) to re-establish the vital wildlife corridors that link key habitats and protected areas,” Alfred said.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Dr Laurentius Ambu said the department is working closely with BCT and its partners from the private sector to reinstate and maintain crucial elephant corridors.

“Wildlife corridors offer one of the best long term solutions facing the endangered Bornean elephant,” Ambu said.

According to the Elephant Action Plan recently released by the department, there are an estimated 2,040 elephants in Sabah.

Source: Bernama (by Haslin Gaffor)

A male tarsier (Tarsius syrichta), about the size of the palm of an adult, was rescued from a new oil palm plantation on March 7, and has since been fitted with a radio collar to identify its home range.

The nocturnal primate was found on land owned by villagers near the Gomantong area by the father of Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) field research assistant Saroto Payar, who then brought it back to the Centre.

Cardiff University student Alice Miles, who is leading a project on the ecology of tarsier and slow loris at the DGFC, said the rescued animal was kept in a cage for a day and fed with insects before it was released into the forest.

“In the evening, we fitted him with a radio-collar and released him into the wild. We named him Lad which is short for “ladang” or plantation in Bahasa Malaysia, and which also refers to males in English.

“The following night, we went back to the forest and looked for him using our telemetry equipment.

“Lad was found about 150 to 200 metres from where he was released, hunting on the ground”, Miles said.

She said this in a press release jointly issued by the Sabah Wildlife Department and DGFC.

DGFC director Dr Benoit Goossens said understanding habitat needs, diet and social organisation of tarsiers were key to forming conservation policies for the unique creatures.

“Apart from Lad, we have so far collared four tarsiers in the vicinity of the field centre in Lot 6 of the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary.

“Recently, two females were fitted with radio collars enabling us to identify their sleeping sites and map their home range. We hope that Lad will meet one of these two females in the near future,” Goossens said.

He said the nocturnal primate project at DGFC is funded by three American zoos — Columbus, Cleveland and Phoenix.

Source: Bernama

A group of secondary students from Japan has volunteered to come to Sabah for the first time to plant mangroves and even donated RM3,500 in support of the State’s project on rehabilitation of degraded mangroves.

State Forestry Department (SFD) Director Datuk Sam Mannan said the group of students from Ritsumeikan Uji High School in Kyoto was brought by Professor Shigeyuki Baba, Executive Director of the International Society for Mangrove Ecosystem (ISME).

He said the trip to Sabah was in conjunction with the third meeting of the Project Steering Committee on rehabilitation of degraded mangroves that was held in Sandakan yesterday.

It was part of the collaboration between SFD and ISME that was sealed on November 10, 2010 to implement the rehabilitation project.

Sam said the students, led by their teacher Saori Matsuoka, were all excited about the trip and took part in planting mangroves in Sungai Lalasun, Sandakan.

He added that from the funds raised for the trip, the students donated 10,000 Yen (more than RM3,500) to SFD in support of mangrove rehabilitation in the State.

Recognising the importance of cultural exchange and nature education, the students visited SMK Muhibbah Sandakan, the Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre and the Labuk Bay Proboscis Monkey Centre.

Sam said the collaborative project between SFD and ISME is funded by Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co. Ltd, and the first phase of the project would be for three years (2011-2014 with an annual target of 50 hectares.

He said the ISME had remitted RM206,300 to SFD to support the expenditures of rehabilitation work for the first year and from October 2011 to March 2012, the project had planted 50 hectares of degraded mangroves in forest reserves of Sandakan and Beaufort.

The PSC was formed and chaired by the Director of SFD to monitor the progress of the project, and thus far, the committee had met three times in Sandakan.

ISME was established in 1990 to promote research, conservation, rational management and sustainable use of mangrove ecosystems. With its Secretariat located at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan, the society now has over 1000 members from 90 countries/regions.

During the Society’s 8th General Assembly and Mangrove Workshop in Sandakan in September last year, SFD was awarded an honorary institutional membership of ISME.

Sam said such collaboration presented a great opportunity for SFD to strengthen its capacity in mangrove rehabilitation.

“SFD is honoured to be chosen by the Society for the project implementation.

“Sabah is the first state in Malaysia to have such collaboration with ISME and this may herald the beginning of other collaborative efforts between institutions in Japan and Sabah in the future,” he added.

Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2012/03/16/japanese-students-plant-mangroves-to-support-rehabilitation-terkini/#ixzz1pdweCdBm

World renowned hornbill expert from Thailand, Professor Dr Pilai Poonswad of Mahidol University and the Hornbill Research Foundation (HRF), has expressed her concern for the lack of information on the breeding cycles of hornbills in Sabah.

“I have visited Sabah before briefly for the Borneo Bird Festival last year but after visiting the Lower Kinabatangan to do a rapid assessment of hornbills, I am now concerned in particular with the lack of information on breeding cycles for the whole state and the lack of suitable nesting trees in this area in particular,” shared Poonswad.

Poonswad and her team of three researchers spent a week with local counterparts at field sites of the Lower Kinabatangan with the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), HUTAN — Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Programme (HUTAN-KOCP) and the Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC).

“The first thing that needs to be done is to establish when are the different species of hornbills breeding,” stated Poonswad who has spent the past 33 years studying and carrying out community based conservation of hornbills in Thailand.

During the teams’ rapid assessment in the Lower Kinabatangan, another issue that has caused concern for Poonswad and her researchers is the lack of suitable nesting trees.

“I understand that the Lower Kinabatangan is a forest that has previously been extensively logged and I can clearly see it is also now part of the oil palm landscape. This means that big trees which are usually preferred by hornbills are missing from this area,” explained Poonswad.

For example, in a similar site in Southern Thailand, Rhinoceros Hornbills (Buceros rhinoceros) on average makes its nest in trees that have a diameter of about 148 centimetres but in the Lower Kinabatangan, Poonswad estimated that trees that might be suitable were mostly between 40 to 60 centimetres in diameter.

“Talking to our counterparts, we know that the Rhinoceros Hornbills are seen along the Lower Kinabatangan, even in flocks but this doesn’t mean they are nesting here. They could be seen during non-breeding cycles, which is why it is important to establish the basic information of breeding cycles,” said Poonswad.

As part of their work, HRF also ensures that there are adequate nesting sites before the breeding cycle that varies between the different species of hornbills.

“We will repair natural nesting sites when needed and put up artificial sites where they are no natural options to nest,” said Poonswad.

While her team had not planned to do either during their rapid assessment, they scrambled materials to repair one nesting site in DGFC and to build another outside their homestay in Sukau because of their concern for a pair of Oriental Pied Hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris) they saw daily.

“The dedication and passion of the HRF is extraordinary and I am grateful that they made the time to come down to the Lower Kinabatangan to do this much needed rapid assessment even though it clashed with the beginning of the hornbill season in Thailand,” said Dr Marc Ancrenaz, scientific director of HUTAN-KOCP.

HUTAN — KOCP has been investigating the hornbill situation in the Lower Kinabatangan with survey interviews of local communities from 2009 to 2010 before presenting their findings last year.

“Through interview surveys, the local community also specified that the loss of big trees over the past generation as the cause of decline of hornbill nesting sites and this is an issue we have to address if we want to see all eight species in the Lower Kinabatangan in the long term,” said Ancrenaz.

Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2012/03/19/young-hornbills-missing-from-lower-kinabatangan/#ixzz1pdwMls3u

The fragmentation of the forest habitats is one of the key challenges to ensure the survival of the Bornean elephants in Sabah. The ‘Melapi elephant corridor’ in Sukau has proven that even a strip of land 50 meters wide makes a difference to facilitate the migration of the Bornean elephant herds in Lower Kinabatangan.

The conservation project, led by Raymond Alfred, the head of Conservation and Research, Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT), explained that the corridor was established in August 2011 which is a collaboration between the Sabah Wildlife Department and Borneo Conservation Trust, together with their partners Syarikat Yu Kwang Development Sdn. Bhd. and Proboscis Lodge Bukit Melapi.

The Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) is a non-profit NGO established in 2006 and was incorporated under the Trustee’s Ordinance 1951, Cap. 148 (Sabah).

BCT relies wholly on funds and grants that is provided by individuals and corporations, to enable it to implement conservation and research works.

The establishment of the Borneo Conservation Trust (BCT) was first mooted as an unprecedented Malaysia-Japanese effort to re-acquire the important alienated lands in the wetlands and riverine forests in order to allow the movements of Bornean elephants and orang utans, the flagship species of Sabah.

“We are very happy to know that the elephants are now able to pass through the land using this corridor to migrate from one key habitat to another, when previously it was a very narrow bottleneck,” said Alfred.

“This collaborative effort is an example where the private sector can work with us and the NGOs. We welcome the opportunity to work hand-in-hand with companies and organisations keen to play an active role in supporting and contributing to Sabah’s wildlife conservation initiatives,” said Dr Laurentius N. Ambu, the director of the Sabah Wildlife Department.

“With the re-establishment of this corridor, the potential human and elephant conflict in the villages and plantations is also reduced,” concluded Ambu.

This week, students from the Nihon University Japan, planted more than 100 trees within this corridor to facilitate the movement of the orang utans within the fragmented habitat in the future.

The activities of the students were coordinated by Borneo Conservation Trust Japan (BCT-Japan).

With continuous diligent effort in the next three years, a forest canopy could be eventually established in the area.

Source: Borneo Post