The last week of the Sumatran tiger expedition has been very busy. The team took part in a village ceremony the day after the buffalo sacrifice. It was a festive affair with traditional music, dance and song. The whole team also went on an overnight camping trip to survey cells far up the river. One of the survey teams had quite a fright when two sun bears ran out in front of them! “Febri had to sound the air horn to scare them away from the area before we could safely continue the survey” explains Paul from the UK. In the same survey cell scat from a leopard cat was also found, a rather rare find. The other team did not encounter any bears, but they did get a birds-eye view of the reserve after a very steep climb to a clear summit.
We also visited the school in Batu Sanggan village. This is one of the eight villages that lie inside the reserve. About 40 children attend the elementary school there and they were all eager to learn about the rainforest and its animal inhabitants. One of the five rangers that work in the Rimbang Bailing wildlife reserve accompanied us to the school visit, and in the evening back at the research station we had the chance to ask him questions and he told us about his work in the reserve, “We work closely with WWF and one of the most important parts of my work is education. Through education and local empowerment we have managed to turn 60 hectares of palm oil plantation back to the reserve and we are currently working on reforestation of that area.” This is good news indeed, considering the rangers here have no power actually to enforce the rules of the reserve, and lacking any boats to patrol the reserve themselves the partnership with WWF is of utmost importance.
During the second slot of the expedition, we successfully collected all of the eleven camera traps that were placed by the first team and surveyed the same amount of cells. One extra camera was placed behind the research station, making it twelve camera traps in total. We conducted four interviews with local villagers, hosted one school group at the station, and visited one school inside the reserve. The camera traps recorded banded palm civet, pig-tailed macaque, long-tailed macaques, barking deer, mouse deer, porcupine and wild pig. We also recorded signs of agile gibbon, siamang, sun bear, water buffalo, leopard cat, wild pig, porcupine and long-tailed macaque during our surveys. This is good news as it means there are plenty of potential prey for tigers. More good news is that Febri’s tiger team who work deep inside the reserve caught tigers mating on one of their camera traps this year. Hopefully there will soon be more tigers inside the reserve.
A big thank you to everyone who has helped out this year. Thanks to your tireless effort we have successfully been able to survey the northern buffer zone of the Rimbang Bailing Reserve, an area where data was seriously lacking. Because our focus this year was there, no tiger signs were recorded, but closing this gap of knowledge was very important for the overall picture that WWF is building of Rimbang Baling and tiger survival there. The outlook for tigers is much better at Rimbang Baling than many other places in the world – and you have contributed to making it so. Thank you from me, from Biosphere Expeditions and WWF for giving up your time and money to do this. You also helped educate local communities about the importance of preserving the forest. This is also vital if tigers are to have a future, because their future is tied intimately to that of their human neighbours in remote areas such as Rimbang Baling. So thank you again for your contribution and I hope to see you again sometime, somewhere on this beautiful blue-green planet of ours.
Ida Vincent
Expedition leader
Biosphere Expeditions: blogs from the frontline of wildlife conservation and the fight for a more sustainable planet 