"Launching the Bornean Banteng Programme" by Sabah Wildlife Department, Danau Girang Field Centre and HUTAN

Two very healthy-looking males photographed in Malua Forest Reserve by camera trap.




Two very healthy-looking males photographed in Malua Forest Reserve by camera trap.




A female and a male banteng photographed in Malua Forest Reserve by camera trap.




A female banteng and two adolescents photographed in Malua Forest Reserve by camera trap.




A beautiful male banteng photographed in Malua Forest Reserve by camera trap.


This is another efforts by various bodies in Sabah to protect the wildlife against extinction. Well done and congrats.

A Joint Press Release From Sabah Wildlife Department, Danau Girang Field Centre and HUTAN

Photos / Articles by :
Dr Benoit Goossens
Danau Girang Field Centre
Director

Launching the Bornean Banteng Programme - June 11, 2011 Saturday

Kota Kinabalu: Sabah Wildlife Department, Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC), and the NGO HUTAN recently launched the "Bornean Banteng Programme" with funding from Houston Zoo, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, the Mohamed Bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund and Woodland Park Zoo.

The project will collaborate with several partners such as the Sabah Forestry Department, New Forests Asia Sdn Bhd and the Malua Biobank Project, Cardiff University, and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research.

"The Bornean Banteng Programme, initiated by our Department, will intend to advance understanding, and the conservation, of one of the most charismatic and still unknown mammal species, the Bornean banteng," explained Dr Laurentius Ambu, Director of the Sabah Wildlife Department and a member of the IUCN's Asian Wild Cattle Specialist Group.

"It will be a long-term programme which aims to provide insights into the ecology of this endangered wild cattle species, with individual numbers in Sabah much lower than the number of elephants. Years of poaching and recent forest conversion to vast areas of oil palm plantations have induced a drastic decline of the populations of banteng living in Borneo. This species could be the first large mammal to go extinct in a near future if nothing is done to reverse the situation," said Dr Benoit Goossens, Director of the Danau Girang Field Centre.

"Ecological information is crucial to the conservation of the banteng, however its elusive behaviour, the remote inhospitable forest habitat it lives in and its small population size preclude investigations. To overcome these problems, we propose to study the population in two forest reserves, Tabin Wildlife Reserve and Malua Forest Reserve, by using satellite telemetry, remote camera traps and genetic analyses," added Goossens.

"With two local field research assistants, we have started setting up camera traps in Malua and Tabin," explained Penny Gardner, a British PhD student attached to DGFC, registered at Cardiff University, and working on the project. "In Malua, we already managed to collect some wonderful pictures of healthy adult males and females, as well as juveniles that we show here," added Gardner.

"The results of this programme will assist our Department to develop a State Action Plan for all banteng across Sabah, and will hopefully increase awareness and appreciation of the wonderful wildlife that Sabah is blessed with and that we should protect against poaching, habitat degradation and habitat loss," concluded Ambu.