Proboscis Monkey Blog

Friday 17-03-2006

Elephants instead of Proboscis Monkey

Today our second day at Menanggol (small River) Lodge from Discovery Tours in Sukau on the riverbank of the Kinabatangan River meaning Long Chinese River (560KM). Named after Chinese doing barter trade with locals for birdnests (soup) and ivory. No wonder local elephants are also nearly extinct. We got to this riverlodge after a 2-3 hours long drive from Sandekan, particularly on a bad sand/mud road through the ongoing palm oil plantations. The guide calls it a relaxing ride with back massage! Far from that. There are some simple very basic lodges (small cabins) with jetty’s along the river, but no jungle sounds here for the tourists but a continual day and night annoying machines and motor engine sound coming from a pump on a large and deep palm-oilboat tanker laying in the river. Day and night filled with tons of oil. On the sandy riversides loud manoeuvring big oil lorries. Amazing that they use a place like this in between tourists lodges. It is like an oil harbour. Absolutely ridiculous to disturb our night rest. Not a recommendable place to be, but no alternatives to visit one of the last remaining PM habitats. Let us hope the tanking only happens a few times, a month or year or as our guide told us this is only happening because of the highwater problems? Hope he is right.  The Kinabatangan River two months ago raised 2-3 meters through heavy rainfall and 3 of the 5 lodges on the side of the river in Sukau were out of order.

But no jungle sounds here for us and to record jungle and bird sounds it is impossible within a large area. Some of them still working hard to get them fixed from water damage. The lodges to be also found on Google for more info are: Sukau River Lodge (Shaban Resthouse) Kinabatangan River Lodge, Proboscis Lodge, and our Sri Menanggol Discovery Tours Lodge. The Proboscis Lodge at the entrance of the best PM spotting sighting side river of the Kinabatangan is the Menanggol and was damaged most. This 27 km long river (at the end connected to the Gomantong caves) is only 10-20 meters wide and the best hot spot for Proboscis. Travel between 4 and 6 pm 3 to 5km upstream, as quite as possible; PM is easily disturbed by the sound of boat engines and human chatter. Also early in the morning between 7 and 8 they will be on the sides of this river, after that they disappear in the small left over mangrove and forest. To see how wide this forest actually is we would love to make some photo’s from the sky. We are sure that on some parts after just a few trees the palmoil field start. We could hear twice on a sunday morning chainsaws!

Also on this river we saw several other endangered forest animals like Hornbill, Egrets, Cormorants, Oriental Darter, and….the Borneo Pygmy Elephants. But the change that you see them is little. But we were very lucky and today in the afternoon excursion we saw some on the riverside part of a group of 60. (only 150 in total here and 2000 in Sabah according to WWF) Pretty soon many other boats park with noisy tourists and loud shouting kids. They think it is Disneyworld here.

The guide told us there were two big groups of this special kind of Elephant remaining in this area some monitored with transponder/sender collars; 150 elephants in total. After that we went a lot further down on the river, far away from disturbing sounds for another PM sound recording and digital video and photo sessions. We realize with tears in our eyes that these sounds are probably soon the last remaining sounds one can tape of the last small left over’s of a beautiful rainforest. After a few miles on the sides of the river the oil fields start. Originally we had to leave tomorrow but we love these boat trips and can’t say goodbye to our beloved Proboscis, need more and more footage, so we decided to stay another three nights.

THE JAN PROBOSCIS MONKEY BLOG
is written now ‘LIVE’ in Borneo Malaysia
by Jan van der Meer
founder http://www.global-dvc.org/ and
Photographer and DVD-producer
of the Proboscis Monkey in Borneo
other info on Proboscis Monkey in Dutch and more
photographs and first edited videoclips at:
http://www.orang-belanda.hyves.nl/