US zoos helping save Sabah’s carnivores

A US team is supporting Sabah Wildlife Department in its conservation efforts.

SANDAKAN: Four American zoos and several private donors from New York are jointly funding the Sabah Wildlife Department’s (SWD) efforts to understand better the conservation of a diverse variety of carnivores in the lower Kinabatangan floodplain.

The US zoos in Houston, Columbus, Cincinnati and Phoenix are supporting a programme called “Kinabatangan Carnivore Programme (KCP)”, which is being jointly researched and studied by SWD and its partners – Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), NGOs HUTAN and WildCRU.

According to SWD director Dr Laurentius Ambu, the department would be collaborating with Andrew Hearn of WildCRU (University of Oxford, UK) who spent the last four years studying clouded leopards and other carnivores in Danum Valley and Tabin Wildlife Reserve.

“Hearn’s experience with camera trapping is useful for the success of this project,” said Laurentius.

Meanwhile, DGFC director Dr Benoit Goossens said the programme, which aims to provide insights into Bornean carnivore ecology and develop habitat suitability models for the Bornean carnivore species, would be long term.

“It is crucial for wildlife conservationists and managers to find out about what dispersal opportunities exist for these carnivores and other mammals within the fragmented landscape of the lower Kinabatangan wildlife sanctuary and how might dispersal corridors be protected, enhanced and restored,” Goossens said.

Forest corridors

Cardiff University undergraduates, Rob Colgan and Rodi Tenquist, who are doing their professional training at DGFC, are providing field assistance for the project.

“Last November, we were pleased to find a sequence of 12 pictures showing a female clouded leopard and her cub walking along a trail. These two carnivores were also recorded in December on most of our cameras along a thin corridor of forest between the river and a plantation.

“Our preliminary data showed that carnivores are still present in the Kinabatangan floodplain. However, forest fragmentation and habitat destruction had resulted in their decline,” they said.

According to Colgan and Tenquist, the pictures showed that these animals rely on forest corridors for moving around forest patches.
Marc Ancrenaz, co-director of NGO HUTAN, said that forest corridors were essential to the survival of the various species such as the orangutans, gibbons, proboscis monkeys and elephants.

“Without these corridors, the population of most of these species will decline and go extinct. With the disappearance of these key species, not only will the ecosystem not function anymore, but the tourism industry will also be negatively impacted.

“It is really urgent for everybody to collaborate in order to create these corridors before it is too late,” he said. - FMT