Another invites for VIPs to join Sg Ingei expedition

British High Commissioner Rob Fenn (R) receiving a souvenir from Project Administrator Dr Ang Bee Biaw during the appreciation dinner for the Sg Ingei Faunal Biodiversity Surveys held at The Airport Restaurant, Brunei International Airport, Berakas.Picture: BT/Ubaidillah Masli

Dr Joseph Charles delivering his remarks during the appreciation dinner last night. Pictures: BT/Ubaidillah Masli

UBAIDILLAH MASLI
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Sunday, September 25, 2011

THE on-going Sungai Ingei Faunal Biodiversity Survey will once again invite "VIPs" and the media to tag along into the depths of the remote, virtually-undisturbed forests in the interior of Belait District next month.

The visit, slated for October 28-30, will see for the first time participation from senior personnel of Standard Chartered Bank Brunei (SCB), the survey's Project Administrator, Dr Ang Bee Biaw told The Brunei Times yesterday.

SCB is providing the funding for the two-year Heart of Borneo (HoB) project, from a US$500,000 ($700,000) prize donation from the Race for a Living Planet Environment Challenge, which Brunei won last year for its HoB initiative.

Attending an appreciation dinner to mark the survey's progress so far, SCB Chief Executive Officer Lai Pei-Si confirmed that she will be taking part in the visit and said that she was "excited" to go.

The CEO's predecessors have planned to visit the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) scientists at work in Ingei before but bad weather and mismatch of schedules have prevented them from doing so in the past.

The visit requires participants to travel up to a day upriver, depending on the water level and number of obstructions caused by fallen logs along the river, from the Bukit Sawat jetty and passing Kg Melilas by longboat.

The upcoming visit also invited British High Commissioner to Brunei Rob Fenn, who has been to Sg Ingeionce before earlier this year, and Minister of Industry and Primary Resources Pehin Orang Kaya SeriUtama Dato Seri Setia Hj Yahya Begawan Mudim Dato Paduka Hj Bakar.

Ang said that the minister has yet to confirm his participation due to a busy schedule, but if he did join, the October visit will make it Pehin Dato Hj Yahya's fourth to join the Sg Ingei biodiversity survey.

The project administrator added they would try to show the "VIPs" the unique forest mosaic found within the 18,000 hectares of the Sg Ingei Protection Forest. "Every time we bring guests out there, we try to do something different," Ang said.

The survey is hoped to mount enough evidence to convince authorities to turn the forests into a wildlife sanctuary and increase protection from threats and such.

The two phases of the project have been completed, but the scientists have to return periodically to retrieve the images caught by the heat- and motion-triggered camera traps left running in the forests. "Hopefully, by the end of the expedition in December 2012, we will have an exhaustive list of animal species found in Sg Ingei (forests)." The upcoming visit will also see the scientific team joined by a tarsier expert from Indonesia, Dr Indera Yustian and an expert on herpetofauna from Universiti MalaysiaSarawak, Professor Indera Neil Das, who will be studying crocodiles in Sg Ingei and Sg Belait. This was part of the initiative to include more people and more technologies to make it truly an HoB project, Angsaid.

The Brunei Times

Study of Sg Ingei wildlife in videos

(Top) One of about 60 camera traps placed along suspected animal game trails and feeding grounds along the "furthest" of four trails scientists are using to study wildlife in Sg Ingei during a VIP visit of the UBD-led faunal biodiversity survey to Sg Ingei from March 25-27, 2011. (Above) Wildlife photographer and videographer, Hogg (R) in discussion at the Sg Ingei basecamp with members of the WWF Heart of Brunei project. Picture: BT file

UBAIDILLAH MASLI
BELAIT

Thursday, August 11, 2011

SEVERAL videos of the on-going study of wildlife in the remote forests of Sungai Ingei are anticipated to be produced by a professional photographer-cum-videographer whom the Universiti Brunei Darussalam-led scientific team invited to join the two-year expedition.

With about 40 years' experience documenting wildlife in the likes of Malaysia and Australia, Stephen Hogg of Kuala Lumpur-based Wildtrack Photography said that he has already managed to capture a number of animals that was "new to him".

The wildlife enthusiast told The Brunei Times that he has found at least two new tarantula spiders and "a variety of different bugs that I have never seen in my life before".

"The forests seems to be extremely rich," he said, adding that the loudness of the forests were an indication of its richness. "It's pretty blaring."

Speaking during an interview at the Sungai Ingei Faunal Biodiversity Survey basecamp, located some seven hours upriver from Bukit Sawat jetty, Hogg said that the diversity of the protected forests was evident also in the range of bird sounds heard there.

"Birds very rarely sing. Here you hear the song(s) of many different species," he said.

A freelance photographer who has been taking wildlife shots since his teenage years and has worked with the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in the UK, Hogg has already produced at least one video for the expedition.

The video was shown to the VIP guests, which included the minister of Industry and Primary Resources, the British High Commissioner to Brunei and World Wildlife Fund for Nature officials, during a weekend excursion to Ingei last month.

The videos created by Hogg, who stayed with the scientists in Ingei from July 2-23 and also took part during the survey's first phase last year, were also planned to be used for future public education programmes.

"Our ideas are: we want to produce a general video, and short videos on specific techniques (to study fauna) hoped to be distributed and used in schools," Project Leader Dr Joseph Charles of UBD was quoted in a previous report.

Hogg was also supplying and assisting the scientific team in the use of camera traps, one of the technological tools they are using to remotely document the wildlife in Ingei.

The scientists has set up about 60 camera traps, which each have a "standard" compact camera fitted inside a Pelican case and was triggered by an electronic circuit board that emits a passive infra-red beam, in areas within the forest where animals were believed to frequent.

"It's a very sensitive beam, it can detect heat and motion at night beyond 20-25 metres. It's a long way down the (animal) trail."

"Anything that moves that's a mammal or a bird that's warm-blooded, crosses the path where the beam is pointing, although they can't see the beam, and that will trigger the camera to power up and take the picture," he explained.

Hogg has facilitated a number of "intensive training exercises" to advise the scientists on things to look out for when setting up the camera traps such as positioning the camouflage-painted devices to avoid glare from the sun, "reading" the wildlife trails and recognising certain fast-growing vegetation which can block the cameras as they were left there for several months at a time.

"Something it seems that they've never done (is) taking a look at the results that they get from the camera traps from the first time setting, and re-evaluating those results, and then changing positions of cameras," he said.

"For example, when they set the cameras, they are not taking into consideration where sun rise and sun set is."

However, despite the amateur attempts, Hogg said there were "some really awesome pictures" taken by the team.

The study, which concludes in 2012, is hoped to provide evidence for authorities to convert the 18,000-hectare Sg Ingei Protection Forests into a wildlife sanctuary.

The Brunei Times

New frog species expected at Sg Ingei

A Harlequin tree frog caught by UBD postgraduate student volunteer Hanyrol Hanyzan Ahmadsah (pictured) during the second phase of the Sg Ingei Faunal Biodiversity Survey. Picture: BT File

UBAIDILLAH MASLI
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Saturday, August 20, 2011

ANY new finds of unrecorded species of frogs made during the on-going wildlife study of Sungai IngeiProtection Forest will be included into the national inventory of amphibians, members of the scientific team said yesterday.

Speaking over the phone while on a research trip in Labi yesterday, tropical ecologist Dr Ulmar Grafe said that although they have yet to make any "unusual" frog discoveries within the first leg of the two-yearSg Ingei Faunal Biodiversity Survey, they anticipated such finds could be made in this final year of the study.

"The place is a mosaic of different kinds of habitats. As we go in more and more, maybe we will find more unusual species that we haven't got so far," Grafe said. "There might be several new species but we don't have any firm evidence for that yet."

The Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) lecturer said that the findings will be included into the national checklist of amphibians, which he said currently stands at some 83 species, about half of all amphibians found on Borneo.

"(From) all the species found on the third largest island in the world...in a small section just in Brunei, (we can find) maybe half of the species that we find in the (whole) island. That's significant (and) puts Brunei on the map, with respect to amphibians."

The majority of the species were documented in Belalong of Temburong District and in Teraja, also inBelait, said a UBD Masters student volunteer who has been assisting Grafe with the research on amphibians in Ingei.

Hanyrol Hanyzan Ahmadsah, a Masters in Biology by Research student, said that a "limited" number of species could be found in Ingei when compared to Belalong due to the former area's terrain. She said, in a separate interview yesterday, that Belalong had a hilly, steep terrain giving rise to a greater diversity of amphibian species whereas Ingei was flatter.

Nonetheless, she said Ingei could still yield a different set of species than that found elsewhere in Brunei, further backing the scientists' efforts to come up with enough scientific evidence to turn the 18,000-hectare protected forests of Sg Ingei into a wildlife sanctuary.

When asked if the frog team has made any interesting finds so far, Hanyrol said, "for me, everything is interesting".

She shared that she would search for frogs at night, assisted by two staff from the Museums Department, at a pond "the size of a house" located nearby the UBD-led project's basecamp, some seven hours upriver of the nearest village of Kg Melilas.

"Every night we go there, we find different species around the pond," she said.

Frogs are taken back to the camp as samples, where they are identified and kept to be later preserved in alcohol and added to the Ingei collection of amphibian samples.

"Sometimes species identification is not clear just by the morphology and genetics. Samples have to be taken and DNA has to be analysed (to confirm) the species," Grafe said.

The collection would help to signify Ingei's value as an area rich in biodiversity and will be "our contribution to the cause" of persuading authorities to further protect Ingei as a haven for wildlife.

The Standard Chartered Bank-funded Heart of Borneo project was carried out in stages, where the scientists camp out and do their study in Ingei for weeks at a time. The scientists are currently away from the project, but camera traps were left on suspected animal trails.The Brunei Times