This article is the first in a series of journal entries by Natural Encounters Supervisor, Amanda Daly, on her recent trip to visit the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project in Borneo.
20 May 2009: The Kinabatangan
After a few minutes on the river, all the time crunched up on airplanes was already worth it.
Dusk on the Kinabatangan
We were sitting in a boat under a big tree of wild long-tailed macaques, at least twenty of them – lithe grey shapes moving along the branches of a tall tree overhanging the water. We could see mothers with clinging infants. Goofy juveniles scattered along the branches and banks, watched us unconcernedly, curiously. They were our first wild monkeys in Malaysia, my idea of heaven.
When you think about it, a day is an amazingly short span of time to travel from one point on the globe to the point almost directly opposite. It still feels like a long time when you’re doing it. Martina and I had flown from Houston to Chicago, from Chicago over the Bering Strait and down to Soeul, and from Soeul to Kota Kinabalu, a large city (“Kota” means city.) by the standards of the Malaysian state of Sabah.
Produce stand on the way to Danau Girang Field Centre
Since then, we’d had a night’s sleep and a day-long car ride that took us from the foot of Mount Kinabalu to a small eco-tourism village on the banks of the Kinabatangan River. There we met a young Malaysian man named Salen and he and our host, Benoit Goossens piled us and our luggage into a small blue motor boat for the last leg of the journey to Danau Girang Field Centre. Owned by the Sabah Wildlife Department and supported by Cardiff University, the new field center provides resources and a home base for research that will contribute to the conservation of the Kinabatangan region of Borneo. Benoit had come up with the idea after hearing about an education center that had been built in the forest near the river and then fallen into disuse. Now, Benoit directs the research facility out of those buildings. Our visit fell just as the first year of active research was coming to a close.
Palm fruit truck
The river was wide, the water approximately the color of chocolate milk. The fresh, cool air felt great. Trees lined both banks, mostly natural forest but on the hills to our right, the green patchwork gave way to a uniform canopy of palms. To the naïve eye, the palms are pretty but we’d already spent hours that day driving past them, oil palms planted in row after row after row, the monotony broken only by the occasional sign, in English and Chinese, declaring the name of the plantation. A guard shack. A cluster of scenic wooden houses on stilts, a smattering of fruit trees, a little mosque with a metal dome on top – a village for the workers. It’s a pretty crop, dark green fronds shading light green ferns that grow across the ground and up the trunks. But it creates a monoculture where few animals can survive for long. Smaller scale, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It doesn’t deplete the soil terribly. Many animals can move through it for short distances. But they sell the palm oil all over the world. In the United States, we eat it in our snack foods. It’s in our lotions, our cosmetics. So there’s a strong incentive to plant palm and now it covers about 16% of Sabah state. Elephants are killed to keep them from eating the new palm chutes. Orangutans venture in and get lost. And starve. So I was concerned to see the palms even here in the wildlife sanctuary so close to the river that forms the backbone of the ecosystem.
Proboscis monkeys over the Kinabatangan River
But soon we had passed the palms and five minutes later, we were at a tree full of silver leaf monkeys, harder to find and more on their guard than the macaques. As our boat approached, they ran nimbly to the safest spots at the very ends of their branches where they perched regarding us with a certain amount of suspicion.
Sunrise and sunset are the best times to see wildlife on the river. Monkeys and other animals like to sleep over the water where they have a clear vantage point to spot potential predators. The river also provides a built in escape route. However, dropping into the water and swimming to safety is a strategy of last resort. The river is full of crocodiles.
We saw so many animals – several more troops of macaques, a rare storm stork, it’s dark, graceful form silhouetted overhead, and a rhinoceros hornbill, the first of four types of hornbill we’d see during our stay.
Martina and Benoit at Mt. Kinabalou
There were big white egrets that looked, to my untrained eye, like the ones on Armand Bayou back home. Finally, we saw proboscis monkeys, distinctive even from a distance because of their large size and tawny color. Benoit had spotted them with obvious relief, having put pressure on himself to find some for us to see. The first ones we saw crashed away from us, arms and legs spread as they soared from one branch to another. As the sun sank further, the proboscis settled down in their trees. The next troop let us come closer and we got a good look at arguably the strangest looking monkey in the world. They have long fleshy noses and big round bellies full of leaves. The young ones have a round-eyed, perpetually startled look. Benoit pointed out the breeding male, distinguished not only by his size but also by having the squishiest nose and the roundest belly of all.
By the time Benoit and Salen helped me and Martina carry our bags up the ramp from the boat, the sky had darkened to a deep cornflower blue. As we walked up the path toward the lights of the field center, I still couldn’t believe it – Borneo!
- Amanda Daly, Natural Encounters Supervisor
Ever sat in your backyard on a nice clear, peaceful evening? You sit and relax, enjoying the night sky when out of the corner of your eye you see a strange movement. As you look closer you see a small winged shadow dancing in the sky. You watch in wonder as it darts to and fro. As you are mesmerized by this beautiful dance, you realize those are bats flying in your yard! Suddenly you realize those bats are eating the mosquitoes that have left itching red welts on your arms. 
