Hang around here long enough & you just might be tracked, measured or observed - it’s going around. Scientific studies are thick on the ground along with the more recent addition of active conservation programs like reforestation and peatland restoration. In short, an incredibly productive place with reams of data collected on a daily basis.
The Indonesian umbrella organization here (acronym: CIMTROP) is centred at Palangka Raya university - they own the camp & land around it which includes the large study area. OuTrop operates the field camp under a collaborative agreement & brings in mostly international researchers, assistants, interns and volunteers. The project was established originally to track and observe orang-utans in the wild - behavioural, nutritional, social studies, etc. etc. It expanded to include gibbons and red langurs as more people pursued new research. To properly observe these wildlife groups they must first be habituated to human presence over several years so that they won’t react and behave atypically when a couple of people are crouching in the bush watching their every move.
Numbers of researchers and assistants on site per year vary according to which study projects are accepted, but have been rising over the last several years due to the addition of tree phenology and biodiversity studies (butterfly and fish surveys are two of these currently in progress).
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| Southern Bornean gibbon |
In the last month I was able to get out in the forest three times, once with a couple of visitors and the Field Director, Berni, to see if we could find some orangs - we didn’t, but met the gibbon trackers who were observing a mom & baby pair. I imagine after a long day you might need a neck massage - look up, way up, to check the animals’ activities at regular intervals (I think about every 5 minutes). The work day for primatologists stretches from when their subjects leave their sleeping places early in the morning until they bed down at night - anywhere from 6 to 10 or even 12 hours later.
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| Berni checking out the gibbons, Twenti & Helene collecting data. |
Other forms of life can be seen relaxing after days in the field collecting data or in the office collating it.
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| CIMTROP patrol team building a dam using stems cut from the surrounding woods. |
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| Meter-high seedlings from the forest are planted on top of the dam to stabilize it further. |
The third day in the woods I went along with the CIMTROP patrol team to take pictures while they built two dams in one of the old logging canals. They may look narrow with slow-moving water, but these waterways lace through extensive areas of the peat forest. Intentionally dug several decades previously in order to make access via small boats & wood extraction easier. As a consequence, the canals drain water from the peat soil making the forest highly susceptible to wildfires in an area which is not at all adapted to fire. The Sabangau forest is now a conservation area, and one of the most important preservation steps is to build and maintain dams on the canals, to keep water pooling in the lowland forest.
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| A second smaller dam is built upstream to slow water flow as much as possible. |
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| Scene from camp 3 weeks ago |
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| Camp last week, water is rising. |
I’ll have the chance to tag along with each of the projects, but since the rainy season has now started it’ll be a bit damp - sloshing on forest paths that can be hip deep in water. Ah well, that’s one sign of a healthy peatland tropical forest.
