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Finally it rained. And it rained hard. At around 01:00 Derek came in from his hammock to the base as his cover was dripping heavily, then Verona came into the base having not done up the zip on her tent. But other than a few slightly tired faces this morning, the good news is the river is up again. So we have sent a scout party much deeper into the nature reserve to see how far south we can get for a planned overnighter on Friday. The team came back with good news that we can stay in a village called Aur Kuning, several hours away. The village leader was interviewed and he’s says there has been tiger movement in the last two months nearby. He was also keen for us to use his village in the future for setting up a sub-base so we can survey the inner areas of the nature reserve for longer periods of time. The rest of us have taken advantage of the blank canvas in the stream beds to find some new tracks.
Team 6 has arrived at the base safe and sound after their drive in from the city. The air is filled with smoke from forest fires in the plantations that lead right up to Rimbang Baling nature reserve.
This is the last slot for this year and there is a lot of ground to cover. We’ve spent the last day and a half going through data sheets, maps, compass and GPS work and also a presentation by Febri on the work he is doing and what he is hoping to achieve here.
We’ve just returned from a taster session in the forest, taken stridingly and are about to start the final two weeks of survey work…
The team from group five have all made it back to Pekanbaru safe and sound. Over the last few days the temperature seemed to be hotter than ever, so I’m sure the AC in the bus on the way back was a welcome break.
Yesterday we went to Tanjung Belit elementary school to give a presentation on the Sumatran tiger and their habitat. The students were all keen to tell us what they knew about all the different animals. And the headmaster spoke to us about how happy he is that our project is happening in this area, and he hopes we can all meet again soon and continue to work with the local community. The team of expeditioners (completely off their own backs) had brought a wide array of stationary, writing pads, frisbees, crayons, tennis balls and much more as gifts for the school, which was received gladly from the staff.
It has been a busy two weeks, setting out and checking on the camera traps and surveying new areas. Hopefully the enthusiasm of the last two slots will carry on into the sixth as there is a busy two final weeks ahead of us.
With the team collecting more SD cards over the last couple of days, we have seeing lots of wildlife on the cameras. Yellow throated martens, sun bears, common porcupine, pig tailed macaque, wild pigs and some bird catchers with birds in cages on their backs posing for the camera. That was before a sun bear knocked the camera to one side to climb up the tree for a snack.
Today we set our last camera trap on a road that passes high over the mountains, where a local is said to have seen a tiger two months ago. It wasn’t the best ride ever bouncing around in the back of a pick-up truck in the heat of the day and we are looking forward to seeing what shows up on the pictures.
Earlier in the week, on the bank of the Subayang river getting out of the boat, we saw a paw print of a wildcat, which got one of our days off a good start. Teams have been out to swap over the SD cards in some of our camera traps that were set in place from the last slot. We also secured a school visit for next week in Tanjung Belit, which is the community that has been assisting us through the entire expedition. While in the school Sharon (whose boots had far too many laces to undo) waited on the steps and drew in quite a crowd of students, who were showing off very loudly, how well they could count to ten.
Despite two heavy rain storms, the Subayang river is continuing to drop, making travel in either direction a team effort, having to push our boats over the shallow spots. The locals from Tanjung Belit decided that with the low water levels it was a good time to have a fish harvest that brings the whole community together for a frantic few hours of net throwing and spear fishing. For the team it was a great opportunity to talk to villagers who were all to eager to talk to them. Helen, Mike, Laura and Nicole managed to have a good talk with the head of the village, who was very interested in our project and how it could help the community in the future.
Our expeditioners have also been working hard doing surveys in the forest, setting out camera traps and collecting in SD cards. There has been a lot of animal movement on the cameras set by slot 4, such as wild pig, mouse deer, great argus bird, long tail macaque, leopard cat and sun bear. But the big thrill was seeing a clouded leopard caught by the camera set in cell AA130, set by Febri, Sugi, Sian, Nikki and Helga. While this is not our target species, Febri tells us that the clouded leopard is WWF’s secondary target for this area, as it is an important species that is able to manage ecosystems as a co-predator, after the tiger.
Greetings from Bishkek and apologies for the late entry. It took a while to get the photos organised.
The last seven hours drive from base camp back to Bishkek marks the end of the 4th and last slot of the 2015 Tien Shan expedition studying the elusive snow leopard.
After the final two weeks work surrounded by the amazing Kyrgyz mountain landscape and having made new friends, it is hard to say final goodbyes, but everybody is proud of the legacy they have left behind on this last group: 32 surveyed cells, 18 mammals datasheets filled, 3 direct observations of ibex (also recorded on camera traps) and two additional species of birds (adding to the total of 48 species recorded throughout the entire 2015 Tien Shan expedition period), make for some impressive results.
And what a last team that was! From the very first day everybody settled in quickly and enthusiastically, learning swiftly (helped by old hands Ellen and Vincent, thanks!) and then logging direct sightings of ibex on the very first survey.
We did not record any sign of snow leopard as on the slots before, but plenty of prey species and other environmental data. As our scientist Volodya says, even zero signs recorded in a given cell represent important data (especially in revisited cells) as lack of wildlife signs in cells where it was recorded before helps us understand the direct influence of human presence and the impact of disturbances such as herders and their livestock moving to higher grounds as the snows melted and fresh grass ran out lower down (making a good case for setting up conservation areas to reduce human interference on wildlife). In fact, the melting of the snow allowed to us to survey areas that were previously inaccessible to the preceding slots, driving the 4x4s over and across hair-raising mountain pass roads and onto new valleys. We definitely put those off-road driving skills learned to good practice.
One of the highlights of the slot was witnessing a whole herd of ibex (we counted 10+ on 31st July) moving across a mountain ridge visible from Donguruma valley. A relatively short walk took us to 3618 m, from where we watched the ibexes in awe through our binoculars. Volodya later explained to us that this is repeated behaviour observed in this area where ibex tend to move from one valley to the next when disturbed.
Our last survey walk of the season was a trip to Issyk-ata Pass and Chunchikan valley to retrieve the last four camera traps. Unfortunately the camera traps from Issyk-ata only yielded photos of fellow volunteers (camera set-up & retrieval selfie time!) and empty landscape. However, after two weeks out in snow leopard territory, the camera traps from Chunchikan valley provided us with some good photos of a young ibex and a couple of interesting videos of another (or maybe the same) ibex going past the device and shaking its fluffy tail at us.
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We also had the excitement of our toilet tent disappearing twice. Our detective work found that one of the neighbouring cows had unsuccessfully tried to use it! It was queues in the mornings after that with only one last toilet tent standing, but luckily we had no more cow incidents.
Special thanks to all our volunteers who put so much effort towards this expedition, our field scientist Volodya for sharing his knowledge and insights and for leading us through his work, to our local partners NABU and especially our two experienced and trusty Kyrgyz of the Gruppa Bars and last but not least our champion cook Emma.
Thank you. Safe travels, back keep in touch with Biosphere Expeditions and I hope to see you all again on another expedition some day. And remember Margaret Mead’s word: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Keep up your good efforts for the conservation of this beautiful planet.
Our fifth and penultimate slot is underway, and today we set out for the first time in the rainforest. The team took to navigation on the terrain fantastically. The river is also higher again after some recent rains, so travelling in the boats has been far easier than the last slot. Sadly early Monday morning, I found our rescued leopard cat in a bad way. Three of the participants (who volunteer in big cat sanctuaries) Donna, Sharon, and Natalya tried their best to help. But in the end the cat had been to weak for too long and slipped away. I think this has been a stark reminder to us of how fragile the balance between humans and wildlife is in this area, and how much more work needs to be done.
Team four made it back to Pekanbaru. And they’ve been a great help to the project. With lots of interviews with locals of the surrounding villages, both up and down the river. Quite a few of them have heard of people coming across tiger tracks in the last couple of months. Sadly, there is significant illegal logging going, so we have not been able to safely place any camera traps yet.
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The big surprise came on Thursday afternoon. Helga, Sian, Nicky and Sabine, who had been surveying a village, came across a bird cage with a leopard cat in it, hanging in a tree in the sun! Helga, who works as a captive animal behaviourist, could see immediately see that, unsurprisingly, the very young cat was highly distressed and very dehydrated. They then found out that it had been in the bird cage for two months with barely enough room to move and unable to stand up fully. So the four of them, after some negotiation with the “owner”, who claimed the cat had walked into his house as a kitten, brought the cat back to base in the cage to save it from the inevitable. As it’s not an endangered species there are no sanctuaries to take it to, so once back in camp, the whole team sprung into action. The team got hold of a much larger cage and through guidance from Helga and Febri made a temporary habitat for the leopard cat to live in for the next few weeks, until it gets its strength back again. This will also give us time to make local enquiries and think of the best course of action with our local partner WWF.
Apologies for the dearth of updates, but the internet connection here in the field is either absent or very, very slow. Too slow to send pictures, so you will have to wait for the fortnightly changeovers for the full complement, sorry. So here is just some short text and a couple of pictures to illustrate our work and adventures.
A few days ago we met up with a plantation owner who had taken a tiger track photo on his phone at the end of last year. After walking with him through the forest for several hours, our overnight team finally reached the start point of their survey. The area where the picture was taken last year is now largely rubber plantations so Arnau, Caitlin, Beno and Sugi walked further into the woods and found that people working in that landscape generally don’t like the tiger presence, as it makes them feel unsafe. Febri too fears that at the speed with which these plantation are expanding, there could be human tiger conflict situations in the near future.
Another highlight of this slot was being invited into a local primary scool and Febri gave a presentation on the biodiversity of the rainforest all around them and told them how the future of tigers can be affected by deforestation. After that we played some animal games thought up by the team, which tied into the presentation, although all the scholl girls just wanted to be next to Caitlin with her fascinatingly white skin and red hair.
On our day off the team relaxed by a local waterfall, watching the local boys and team member Arnau, our resident space engineer/acrobat, jumping off the rocks into the pools below.
With the work of the expedition in Rimbang Baling Wildlife Reserve back in full swing, a scientific article about five cat species (tiger, clouded leopard, golden cat, marbled cat, leopard cat) in Sumatra has just been published, examining how these species manage to coexist and the implications for their conservation on an island with high rates of forest loss and habitat degradation.
“[Cats] play a significant role ecologically as predators,” Sunarto Surnato, an ecologist with Virginia Tech and WWF Indonesia and the study’s principal researcher, told mongabay.com. “[T]hey control and influence the population number and also the behavior of other animals, especially their potential prey assemblage and this further affects the vegetation and the overall ecosystem, including the landscape.”
An adult male Sumatran tiger captured by camera trap. Photo credit: WWF_PHKA_VATech.
Using a large camera-trap study in five forested areas in Sumatra, the study camera-trapped all five species, there was only one location in which all five cat species were photographed together – Rimbang Baling Wildlife Reserve, the expedition’s study site!
The authors write that their study has important implications for the conservation and management of the various cat species in the study area, and possibly beyond, noting that the remaining forests of Sumatra, including the degraded ones, still have a high conservation value for wild cats and other wildlife.
“[E]ven the critically endangered Sumatran tiger can achieve high abundance in such forests, likely because prey is still supported in these areas,” the authors write. “[D]espite the widespread perception that rainforest animals need intact forest, we suggest that in addition to intact forested areas, protection of secondary, even degraded forests, is highly beneficial to maintaining the increasingly threatened wild cats in Sumatra.”
A Sumatran tiger captured by camera trap. Photo credit: WWF-KemenLHK.
For us on the expedition, this means that we need to continue to look at the more degraded areas on the fringes of Rimbang Baling Wildlife Reserve, as well as those hard-to-reach, remoter areas, away from people and disturbance, in our quest for wild tiger conservation. We wait for the next update from Anthony on how things are going…
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