One month into our latest survey and I’m pleased to report that things are progressing very well.  After a number of meetings with Sabah Parks, the State authority who manage the Crocker Range National Park, we settled into our new home in the village of Ulu Senagang, nestled just within the park boundaries and walled in by high ridgelines. 

As usual, our first task was to begin planning where we will deploy the camera traps within the park, decisions which are ultimately based on maximizing the chances of capturing cloudeds and other wild cats on camera, as well by the logistics of physically getting there. Our plan is to spread 36 camera stations over 150km2 – no easy task even on relatively even forest, let alone a mountain range. From talking to Sabah Parks employees and local people it quickly became apparent that the Park is rarely accessed (at least on official/legal business) and thus established trails are therefore few and far between, particularly on the scale that we’ll be operating.  

Our strategy, then, was to determine ridgeline formations from basic topographic maps, features which aid our movement and which we have demonstrated are used extensively by wild cats, transfer the spatial info onto our GPS units, and then follow the routes deep into the park, setting up cameras as we go. At this stage we had little idea of what the travel routes would be like, how open the forest would be, and thus how far we could reasonably expect to move each day. 

So, loaded up with several days of food, camping gear, camera trapping gear and our trusty GPS the team headed up out of the village and climbed to the first of several ridgelines that would take us northwest, and into the park. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, this was no gentle introduction to Crocker’s forests, and after a slippery and relentless 400m ascent, and with burning muscles, we eventually reached the relatively even terrain of the ridgeline. Once there we were pleased by how relatively clear the forest was, and although the trekking was at times pretty tough, we moved swiftly and set eight camera stations and covered a distance of over 24km in 4 days. 

Great!  Well, kind of…  Our rapid movement through the forest is largely because the routes we have been following are also being used by local poachers from surrounding villages, hence the relative openness. One month in, we have now covered over 150km of routes, and on all occasions, regardless of how deep into the forest we have travelled, we have always found signs of people, their camps, and snares and their shot gun cartridges.  Clearly the use of the forest by poachers here, in terms of area, is extensive. What is less clear is how many people and how much poaching is occurring.  We have found some great camera sites and are very optimistic of getting some wild cat photo captures, but the threat of camera theft by the poachers is very much playing on my mind.  In the next few weeks we will begin checking our cameras… stay tuned for (eventual (-: )updates 

The usual suspects... A female leopard cat and her kitten, photographed close to  the border with an oil palm plantation.  Leopard cats were the only species of   wild cat recorded in this forest.

Rather worryingly our camera trap survey of the Kabili-Sepliok Forest Reserve has failed to detect the Sunda clouded leopard.  Is this a true reflection of the localised extinction of these felids in this small and relatively isolated forest block or simply our failure to detect what is actually there?

 

Camera trapping is undoubtedly a powerful research tool and can quickly produce indisputable evidence of a species’ presence in an area. Proving beyond doubt the absence of a species, however, is a rather more difficult affair, and the lack of any camera trap images obtained during a survey does not necessarily prove its absence.  This is particularly true of difficult to detect species such as clouded leopards.

Stray dogs were found at multiple sites across the whole of the forest.  Could their presence be one causal factor in the absence of clouded leopards?

Nevertheless, this was a relatively intensive survey involving a high density of 35 paired cameras sites coupled with an additional 14 sites at which video camera traps were operational. This effort resulted in over 39,000 images and video sequences, including the similarly difficult to detect sun bear. Given this effort, in my opinion, we probably would have detected clouded leopard had they been present, and thus I am strongly inclined to conclude that they are no longer found in Sepliok.  That is not to say that there are not any transient individuals moving through the area from time to time, but it seems unlikely to me that there is a resident population of animals living there.

Although unwelcome news, this is not altogether surprising given the fact that the forests in Sepliok have been reduced to about the size of a single clouded leopard’s home range – ca 40 km2.  Although unwelcome, this finding is another piece in the puzzle to understand what factors control the distribution of this felid on Borneo.

Whilst it's not great news for Sepliok's Sunda clouded leopards, a number of Bornean carnivores were detected in this forest, including leopard cats, sun bears, common and banded palm civets, and yellow throated martens (see video sequence above). Potential prey species including mouse deer, yellow muntjac, sambar deer and bearded pigs were present in apparently good numbers.

Our team will now conduct an extensive questionnaire survey of the Sabah Wildlife and Forestry Department officers working in this area, in an attempt to determine when this species was reliably last seen.  Meanwhile, we have recently moved our camera traps to an area of oil palm plantation immediately to the west of Sepilok, to investigate what species are using this highly modified habitat.

Our team cannot be accused of hanging around.  Having unloaded the last of our gear from the Danau Girang Field Centre’s boat to our trusty truck, we waved goodbye to the mighty Kinabatangan river and set off in search of our next survey site: The Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve. 

The Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve and the adjacent Sepilok Forest Reserve (typically collectively referred to as Sepilok) is an incredibly interesting forest. Home to the world famous Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation Centre, and just a stone’s throw from Sabah’s second largest city, Sandakan, it is home to a diverse array of forest formations and wildlife. Hill Dipterocarp, riverine, Kerangas (heath), and mangrove forests all jostle for space in this relatively small (km²) and isolated forest fragment.  And therein lies the potential problem for its felid inhabitants. Surrounding this matrix of forest, and forming the northern, eastern and western borders, is an assortment  of anthropogenically modified habitats, predominated by oil palm, but also including orchards, industrial areas and housing (see below).  Beyond the mangroves to the south lies the Sepilok Sea, and in the far south west corner a narrow corridor of mangrove links the Sepilok fragment to an extensive area of mangrove that reaches, albeit broken in places, to the mouth of the lower Kinabatangan.

Does this mangrove constitute a corridor connecting wild felid populations between Sepilok and the Kinabatangan, and if not, is Sepilok large enough to support viable populations of clouded leopards and other felids?  What species of wild cat still persist here? Over the next few months we will attempt to shed light on these important questions.  Wish us luck!