Study launched to preserve animals in Kinabatangan area

New Straits Times 4 Feb 11;

KINABATANGAN: A recently launched Kinabatangan Carnivore Programme aims to study animals more closely to ensure their conservation.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Dr Laurentius Ambu said the programme initiated by the department intended to advance understanding and conservation of the diverse carnivores of the Lower Kinabatangan floodplain.

Launched by the department, Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), a non-governmental organisation Hutan and WildCRU, the programme is funded by four American zoos -- Houston, Columbus, Cincinnati and Phoenix -- and private donors in New York.


"We are collaborating with Andrew Hearn from WildCRU (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) who spent the last four years studying clouded leopards and other carnivores in Danum Valley and Tabin Wildlife Reserve. His experience with camera trapping is primordial for the success of this project," said Ambu.

DGFC director Dr Benoit Goossens said it would be a long-term programme to provide insight into Bornean carnivore ecology and density and develop Bornean carnivore species distribution and habitat suitability models.

Two undergraduates from Cardiff University Rob Colgan and Rodi Tenquist said last November they found a sequence of 12 pictures showing a clouded leopard female and her cub walking along a trail.


"Our preliminary data show that carnivores are still present in the Kinabatangan floodplain. However forest fragmentation and habitat destruction result in their decline. The pictures show that these animals rely on forest corridors for moving around forest patches," they said.

Hutan co-director Dr Marc Acrenaz said like other species such as orang utans, gibbons, proboscis monkeys and elephants, carnivores needed corridors of forest for surviving in the Kinabatangan.

"Without these corridors, most populations will decline and go extinct."