The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

If you have travelled to see the orangutans at the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC) you MUST ringfence 30min to an hour at least to visit The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC) that is situated next door. The centre was established in 2008 to rescue and rehabilitate orphaned and confiscated captive bears that have been illegally kept as pets, their habitat destroyed by deforestation. It was opened to the public in 2014.

Red Shield Bug nymph (Pycanum rubeus)

There is an elevated viewing platform that gives good views of a couple of enclosures. We met a member of staff there who answered our questions and invited us to use a high powered monocular to peek at the twitching whiskers of some bears slumbering a little way further away.

The enclosures have taken some doing. They are built deep to withstand the bears obsession for excavating - the bear's efforts in digging a cavernous den in one enclosure has felled trees. The fences have to be built high as the bears are wizard climbers.

Striped Tree Skink (Apterygodon vittatum)

Asian Fairy Bluebird (Irena puella)

The work at BSBCC is on going and can be supported by giving a donation.

Kinabatangan River, Nature Lodge Kinabatangan - day 2 boat trips

Blue-throated bee-eater (Merops viridis)

Our guides, Max and AG, who took us on all our walks and boat trips were extremely enthusiastic about their wildlife heritage and worked hard to show us all they could of it. They were very knowledgeable, pointing out birds, snakes, monitor lizards and crocodiles with impressive ease.

Asiatic reticulated python (Python reticulatus)

Mangrove cat snake (Boiga dendrophila)

Proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus)

Stork-billed kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis)

We ♥ Sungai Kinabatangan.

Kinabatangan River, Nature Lodge Kinabatangan - day 2 jungle walk

Bird's nest ferns (Asplenium nidus)

The fern's leaves trap a "nest" of leaf litter which then decays enabling them to absorb the nutrients. The larger ferns can weigh up to 200kg.

We enjoyed our midday jungle walk, the jungle simmered and ticked around us in the seething heat, biding time for the cool of the evening.

Lantern fly

Millipede

Giant pill millipedes don't release defensive, foul smelling fluids instead they roll themselves into these darling armoured balls.

Common Red Harlequin (Paralaxita telesia)

Sungai Kinabatangan - night walk to see the ghost monkey, kerak hantu

Ruddy kingfisher (Halcyon coromanda)

We jumped at the opportunity to go on the additional guided night walks offered. We overcame our fear of leeches by adopting scare tactics: we tucked our t-shirts into our waistbands and shuffled around in hired wellies our hands stretched out in front of us to avoid going bump in the night (no wonder the Western tarsier's wide-eyed looks of horror at we apparitions). Did our tactics work? No, Suzy got leeched.

One of the highlights of our trip, was spotting not one, but two Western tarsiers. We couldn't believe our luck beyond all expectations. What these photos can't convey is how their ♥ears♥ swiveled and twitched independently to the sounds that the night forest and we hulking humans made around them (no matter how we tried to hold our breath for the entire hour and tip-toe in our wellies).

The tarsier is the only truly carniverous primate, it feeds primarily on insects but also takes lizards, birds, bats, and snakes. Judging by the size of the spiny stick insect we came across perhaps the snakes are an easier option. It has proved very difficult to conserve these creatures in captivity, there has been very little success in breeding programs, so the plight of the tarsier is intrinsically tied to the conservation of its natural habitat.

On our second night walk we didn't see any more tarsiers but were lucky enough to encounter a napu (mouse-deer) and piles of fresh civet droppings.

Sungai Kinabatangan floodplain - a Gift to the Earth

Long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis)

We booked a 3 day, 2 night Sungai Kinabatangan trip through Nasalis Larvatus Tours Sdn Bhd and stayed at their Nature Lodge Kinabatangan, Kampung Bilit, located in the Sukau area.

The state government declared the Lower Kinabatangan as a Gift to the Earth in 1999. In 2005 26,000 hectares of the Lower Kinabatangan were gazetted under the Sabah Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997 as a wildlife sanctuary.

Sukau falls within the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary Area which is a veritable hotspot for primates - ten species are found in this area. The lodge is situated conveniently close to the Menanggul tributary where our knowledgeable and enthusiastic Sungai guides took us for our boat trips.

We were wishing beyond all hope to see truly wild orangutan, and our hearts burst with awe, our lungs with hushed cries of gleeful delight when we saw glimpses of this huge retiring male, sit and unhurriedly partake of its dinner.

We were able to watch the evening mealtime of the harem and bachelor troupes of fabulous Proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus). They are endemic to Borneo, which makes it all the more worthwhile travelling to Kinabatangan in order to be sure to see them in the wild.

According to a 2011 report, authored by Dr. Marc Ancrenaz of Hutan, a French NGO (N 1/09696) established to study orangutans in Sabah, and Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Project (KOCP), 80% of the floodplain having been deforested and converted to palm oil plantation over the past 30 years, "less than 50,000 ha of non-contiguous patches of natural and degraded habitat is left along the Kinabatangan River... Research undertaken by KOCP and Cardiff University found that the majority of the isolated orang-utan sub-populations found in Lower Kinabatangan are facing a high risk of extinction unless contiguous corridors of forests are recreated urgently."

Which explains the high density of primates and wildlife in the narrow strip of rainforest trees bordering the Menanggul tributary.

Southern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina)

Interspecies altruism.

However it is not all desperate news, currently there is an initiative, the Kinabatangan-Corridor of Life (K-CoL) to re-establish a rainforest corridor along the Kinabatangan River to connect the patches of natural forest of the fragmented Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary Area together, the coastal mangrove swamps with the upland rainforests and to grow the population of fruiting trees that are sources of food for orangutans and other frugivores.

In 2008 Hutan, together with the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD), established a KOCP Forest Restoration Unit and tree planting programme to replant 56 acres (more than 20 ha) located in Lot 1 of the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. The unit has employed and trained local villagers to research appropriate trees and experiment to develop techniques and strategies for reforestation plantings. Seedlings are bought from nurseries that are operated by the villagers of Abai and Sukau.

WWF-Malaysia has Memorandums of Understanding with Borneo Samudera Sdn Bhd and Asiatic Development Berhad to revert palm oil land back to natural forest to create the K-CoL; let's hope the tracts are more generous than we can imagine and that even more estates come on board.

Given the value of the associated ecotourism let's hope the members of KiTA (K-CoL Tourism Operators Assoc) which was established jointly with WWF-Malaysia in 2008 contribute proactively and generously to the reforestation process. We sincerely hope that these initiatives further and fairly invest in the expert level training and full-time employment of the distribution of socio-economic benefits to the local Sungai people so they too can embrace and participate in local conservation initiatives and ensure their land and cultural heritage is safeguarded.

Maroon (Presbytis rubicunda) and silvery (Trachypithecus cristatus) langurs.

Storm's stork (Ciconia stormi)

We would very much have like to have tried out a trip organised by the highly recommended community based tour company Red Ape Encounters but it was not to be for 2015, we're watching their web page for future updates.