Howdy all,

for those who may have missed some of my earlier blogs i entered into the TIG Project Borneo to have the oppertunity of a life time to spend 100 days in Borneo working with Orangutan Outreach,

well i have made it through the first round of selections 231 aplicants have been whittled down to 50 and i'm one of them. over the next week 50 will become 20. after a round of interviews 20 will become 10.

So wish me luck and visit my HUB page and become a member and show your support - http://dfa.tigweb.org/hub/mickytort?refresh=336

Give Thanks

Torty

heres a quick run down on what will be happening in the project

Sintang is a district in the interior of West Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, where much of the original forest has already been cut or burned down. Here, a new forest will be created that will provide income for local people and a home for many thousands of protected animals of different species including orangutans. The forest will provide good quality water for local people and protect the downstream population centres against flooding. The forest will also sequester carbon from the atmosphere and assist in stabilizing the climate.

The Merakai area is close to the border of Malaysia and consists of an ex-logging area. Inside the area there are seven small villages with a total of about 7,500 people. All are traditional Dayak villages belonging to the Iban and to the Dayak Ketungau and Dayak Bugau tribes. Another aspect of this project is the development of sugar palms, which will help provide sustainable livelihoods for the local people.

In this location we are setting up the base camp with smaller camps near the nurseries, small working quarters, and facilities that will allow both workers and visitors to spend extended periods of time in the field. On the top of a centrally located 340-meter high hill overlooking the area, is where the action headquarters of DeforestAction will be located – in a traditional Dayak long house.

The 10 selected Project Leaders will be welcomed by the local villagers and spend five months in their community. The first challenge for the Project Leaders will be to install a photovoltaic electricity supply, ventilators and a good water filter to ensure good health for all the inhabitants of the long house, and provide sufficient power to ensure good communication access to the rest of the world.

Project Leaders will be paired with Dayak youth, and will be involved in the planning and setting up of DeforestACTION in the Sintang Lestari region.

The challenge is great, and the tasks will be many and varied including:
 

• Taking part in orangutan rescues, care and rehabilitation
• Preparing a release camp for the rescued orangutans
• Building and setting up the base camps
• Setting up satellite monitoring systems as part of a protection system for existing forests
• Building nurseries (collecting seeds and plants, planting and measuring trees, recording biodiversity and survey local needs and water flow)
• Mapping where to establish forest restoration projects
• Working with the young people of Sintang who are making documentaries about local environmental issues.
• Linking to the DeforestACTION program, sharing the work, research and project updates and taking direction from the young people around the world who are steering the project and raising the funds to sustain it.

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Automatically translated into Italian thanks to WorldLingo

A brief History on the tree planting program, Hutan along with certain sponsors have acquired small plots of land typically along the river bank. In a lot of cases this land has been brought from locals or oil palm plantations and in some instances taken back from oil palm plantations by the government. The reason for this is that by law plantations are not supposed to plant right up to the riverbank and leave a certain amount of space. Many plantations have ignored this and whilst most don’t plant right up to the river they still own the land for future development. So Hutan has purchased these small plots any where from 10 acres to 70-80 acres with plans for a much bigger one in the making. The sights are cleared and re planted then has regular maintenance from the tree planting team.

 

What makes this different to many other reforestation sights is that the plants are not chosen to be fast growing and potentially invasive. All tree species are those that are know to be Orangutan food species that grow in the surrounding forest. Once the sights have been purchased and planting began the ECU team will come in and erect an electric fence around the whole plot so as to keep Elephants, Deer and other species that might trample or eat the young plants.

 

Locals in Sukau and Abai Villages grow seedlings and saplings, families in the two villages have established two co ops where they purchase the materials needed for propagation and nursing from seed and seedlings found in the forest. At a certain age the young trees are then purchased by Hutan, adding another way to for locals to supplement their incomes and at the same time be directly involved in conservation and saving their local forest and animal species.

 

Hutan have employed a team of six local ladies to clear, plant and maintain the plots. It is quite unusual in a male dominated culture to have a team made solely up of women. And this is serious tough and physically demanding work. But let me tell you of my whole trip these ladies are the toughest strongest most hardworking people in the whole Hutan KOCP project. These ladies spend 20 days a month living away from their families and homes out at the various lots working for days nonstop in a small house Hutan have built for them near by the 2 newest sites. And they are always laughing joking and enjoying them selves. Rain or shine.

 

A typical day begins (rain or shine) taking a boat across the river to the new planning sight strapping on a bushwhacker with maybe a 10-15 kilo back pack and walking into do battle with 6-7 foot tall elephant grass that’s kind of like mini bamboo (talk about mowing the lawns). Once the whole area has been cleared its time to begin planting. Working with picks and their machetes the ladies bring new life to a once desolate area.  After a quick smoke break and again with machetes in hand and big grins on faces the ladies  set to a smaller scale war This means trimming the up coming grasses and also the many introduced strangler vines that are almost pandemic through certain areas this is the monotonous task of maintain the existing sites.  But this is also the most important part of the project and the reason it has such a high survival rate. The constant maintenance as well as the electrified perimeter gives all these new trees the best start to life. After 5-7 years the fence will come down and then in another 4-5 some species will begin to fruit .  10 years after the initial planting Hutan are experiencing a 85-90 percent survival rate and Dr. Marc puts it all down to the hard work of the ladies who carry out the work.  One of the days I spent with the ladies they were clearing a site that had been planted many years ago by another conservation group no longer operating in the area as the 6 foot grass was cut down over a huge area of around 40-50 acres only a handful of surviving plants could be seen. Testament to the work of Hutans approach to tackling the reforestation initiative

So i thought i would do a series of posts focusing on the various units that make up Hutan and the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project.

Give Thanks

Mike

Suliman who is the head of the ECU – Elephant Conservation Unit, told this story to me. He said…

Mike along long time ago in the time when my grandfather was still a young man, the Orang Sungai (River People)had never seen the Gajah (elephant) before. The fisherman would be working on the river or the villagers would be in the forest near by the village and some times they would hear these really really loud scary noises. And the people of Sukau knew these noises to be the sound of a really huge monster living deep in the forest. One day my grand father and some of his friends decided to follow these sounds into the forest and see this monster. They trekked for 3 weeks following the loud noises and never could they find the monster that made them.
Then when the Logging and Palm oil industries came to Sabah and the forest size began to shrink the locals began to see the Gajah closer to the village and along the river banks as they were forced out of the deep forest. But they were still scared of them and would never go close. But by the time the Orang Sungai began to see more and more of the Gajah my grand father was an old man who could not move around very easily.
I always grew up hearing my grandfather tell his story of the mysterious monster in the deep forest and was fascinated and frightened. When I get this job as head of ECU I began to understand that the elephant is not dangerous and that we can be friends with the elephants and friends with the forest.
One day after realizing this I went to my father and we took a boat to my grandfathers and together we lifted him down into the boat and then found the Gajah along the side of the river and showed them to my grandfather and told him “grandfather this is the Gajah, this is who you and your friends could not find for 3 weeks in the forest, they are not monsters they are NeNe (grandmother/Term of endearment and respect) and deserve to be respected just like our NeNe” just then one of the elephants let out a huge vocalization and my grandfather had finally found his monster.
He passed away 10 days later and I like to think as a happier man for finally seeing his monster in the flesh. In his last week he passed on a wish that all the land he owned that had never been logged or planted be kept that way forever so that if NeNe needed a home she would always have one.

Now as much as this is a beautiful story what it does do as well as make us all feel a little warm on the inside is it lets you know that in 3 generations, not even elephants have gone from a myth to reality. A species that you couldn’t find for weeks of trekking can be found within an hour or two a lot of times of the year. To me this shows in a special way the impact the deforestation via Oil Palm and before that rubber and timber industries have created on the Kinabatangan Forest .

I just thought I would share some information about the local population and the Sabah population in general. The elephants found in Borneo are known as Bornean or Pygmy Elephants. They seem to be a sub species of the mainland Asian elephant. Now whilst no one knows for sure how or when they arrived in Borneo there are a few theories floating about. One is that they swam across from either a neighboring island like Sumatra or the mainland anywhere from 600-1000 years ago. Another and one more commonly believed as accurate is that the whole population are descended from a small number of individuals 3-5 that were given as a gift from a sultan of Siam to a Sultan in Borneo again 600-1000 years ago. The reason this is more commonly accepted is that if you ask anyone who has studied or been around these particular elephants they will tell you they are incredibly docile. And people believe that is because they originate from domesticated stock.
The population in Sabah is a little over 2000 with around 280 individuals living in and around the Lower Kinabatangan area. This is a rough estimate as it has been a while since the last head count was done around 1-2 years ago. Speaking with Marc one of the directors of Hutan, the group in the Kinabatangan 13 years ago numbered around 80 individuals so in around 10-11 years the population has more than tripled. This is an unprecedented population boom and has caused many concerns and much debate. Now I know your probably thinking that’s great elephant numbers are on the rise, but as the elephant population rises the forest continues to shrink due to deforestation from logging, Palm oil and human population growth. All this adds up to some serious concern about how long the remaining forest can sustain the elephant population. No studies have been done on the gestation period of these elephants but it is supposed that it is shorter than Mainland Asian Elephants. In the last 12-18 months it has also become a lot harder to gage the size of the local population up until that many months ago the population was one whole herd that would some times segment into smaller groups but would generally come together a few times a year. Then for instance you could get a fairly accurate population count when they would come together and cross the river. Today you rarely find a group larger than 30-40 individuals. The entire group it seems has fragmented into much smaller groups numbering from 6-20 individuals as a means to sustain them selves. Hutan and other local groups have yet to determine a promising way to perform a census of the area but one thing is for sure population numbers are beginning to become a worry that they will no longer be sustainable. Unless a serious dialogue can be opened up between conservation groups, researchers, scientists, Oil Palm plantations, and the Sabah Wildlife and Forestry departments about creating corridors that link remaining forest and also looking at acquiring more land to reforest the survival of Bornean elephants in the lower Kinabatangan area is at risk.

Howdy all because all my pics I've taken are to big for this site, instead of going through the hassle of shrinking them i have created a Photbucket Account for all to see. Check out the Album @ http://s1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb321/RasTorty/

"A Picture Tells a Thousand Stories"

Give Thanks

Torty