Proboscis Monkey Blog

Thursday 9 march

Chain saws at Survival Island Pulau Tiga

Today we spent some days at Pulau Tiga. This island was used for the American popular TV series Survival Island and the Dutch series Bobo’s in the Bush)
There are no Proboscis here, but we took some good shots and sound recordings of chain saws cutting high trees.
 

Some old sick trees near the lodges had to be cut down. They were a danger in case of a storm. For us this was a unique opportunity to take some very good shots, to be used as stock shots showing the cutting of the rain forest.  
 

Afterwards the macaques, the only monkey species on this island, looked very sad sitting on the trees that had been cut down, a very symbolic image for the destruction of a rain forest.
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/

Wednesday 8 march

Proboscis at Klias and Bako

This morning was a dull one. So we made the (wise) decision not to go. Cloudy, no sun, so we could not film our Monkeys in their best colours. We took some early shrimp fisher footage instead; he was busy getting his nets in, all at the South Chinese Sea in front of our doorstep. 

We were glad we also went to Bako National Park in Sarawak as our first Proboscis encounter last month in Sarawak. After four hours waiting at their hot spot we took some fabulous photo and video shots of a big group coming real close. (See our video footage at www.orang-belanda.hyves.nl ).
 

We got the best show so far, with a male walking on the dry mangrove floor, climbing trees, eating leaves all in close range. Mothers showing their babies on camera! But remarkable enough, at Bako we did not hear a single Proboscis making a sound. Here at Klias they are ‘talking’ all the time. Maybe they have to do so because of the noisy motor boats and tourists.
Anyway, at 5 o’clock we did another trip on the Klias river in a big group of decent tourists. Looking very sharply with our two guides, we saw four big groups of Proboscis. Unfortunately the weather was not too good. When it got dark we saw many so-called Christmas trees full of lightning fire flies. A spectacular view, they even flicker all at the same frequency, which is truly amazing.
One favourite joke is here: …..You know why the Proboscis has a big stomach?……
Because he thinks it’s Christmas after seeing the illuminated Christmas tree.
 

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/

Tuesday 7 march

5.00 a.m. There’s rain and thunder for the first time in two weeks.
It’s nice for the locals but we hope tomorrow it‘s over. Later that day we heard the owner of the boat went out and suddenly we had to pay a lot again for the first trip which we thought was free. We decided that he charged too much for what it would be worth. We expected the monkeys at Klias River would always be too far away to get a some good shots. They must have a big physical problem with these noisy tourists. “So tomorrow” we’ll  take the full tourist boat and maybe we’ll get some good additive shots and we may throw some Taiwanese into the river if they don’t shut up.
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/

For more blogs hit “Previous entries” link underneath!

Monday 6 march
Taiwanees number one on top five list for most irritating behaviour.

Today we made a two-hour car drive from KK to Beaufort. This is a small place near the beach into the south on the road to Brunai. We were going for a boat trip on the Klias River, staying for three days in the Temperung Seaside Lodge on a hill in a very basic room (220 RM a day for the two of us including three excellent meals www.borneo-authentic.com) looking over the South Chinese Sea. We found this in another Internet blog and booked. Not a suitable place for people with walking problems. All rooms can only be reached by a quite difficult jetty like walkways.  We could not wait to see our monkeys. We started our first private boat trip at 4.30 p.m. The boats embarked near a bridge across the Klias River.
Obviously this is one of these typical successful tourist attractions with many companies competing at their own jetty. If a tourist at Kota Kinabalu does not want to make the far trip to the Kinabantang River near Sandakan  this is the place to be, to spot our Proboscis Monkey. Many boats with noisy big 90 HP Evinrude (Ever-rude) petrol engines are ready for the late afternoon sunset trip. Many tourist coaches park along the main road. For our DVD production we rented a boat for ourselves. This way we need not trouble other people and we would not have no noise-troubles from others (we thought). Two widescreen HDV cameras, one on a tripod. Our captain/guide is the very polite, friendly and smiling 32-year-old Malaysian Fauzi Ratip. He has been doing this daily work for 6 years now. In high speed we went to the Proboscis hot spots. We found one after one hour along the Klias River to a smaller tributary called the Kuala Garamma.
 

On this much wider river on both sides are dense swamps with many Sonneratia Cassaloris trees. The Proboscis lives mainly on the leaves of these trees.  Soon I spotted our first male with the big nose. Fauzi immediately turned the boat and attached the rope to some water plants and wisely shuts the noisy engine down. But soon several other boats with about 16 noisy tourists each, noticed us and parked along our boat. As the Malay are very gentle Fauzi did not dare ask them (other companies) to shut down their engines.
Even louder than the sounds of the engines were the noises made by the tourists. They have no respect whatsoever for nature and the Proboscis families. We also wanted to record the typical funny language sounds of the Proboscis Monkey and brought our best professional DPA studio microphones. No way. These Asian people were shouting loudly, laughing, clapping their hands and even smoking. It is a crime and should be stopped.  According to Fauzi’s boss, the ‘Top Sound Chart’ of this most annoying and irritating behaviour ranks as follows:
on 5^th place the Japanese
on 4^th the Italians (‘Sorry’, he said:  ‘there are of course exceptions’),
on 3^rd people from Hong Kong,
on 2^nd people from China.
and on 1^st  the Taiwanese.
They really think it is some kind of football game. No respect for nature and its inhabitants at all. I asked the owner to warn these idiots in future. He should urge them to be quiet or else the boat would  immediately return.
Some years ago we visited the Panda’s in Ocean Park In Hong Kong. No one is allowed to speak, whispering, even coughing is forbidden. Chinese surveillance people carry boards with the word Silence! But the Malay people are obviously too polite and friendly to ask this or even dare ask people personally to shut up and be quiet.  Anyway, because of this matter, on this KLIAS river tour you can almost forget that the Proboscis Monkey will appear in short camera-range. This animal, like a good Malaysian citizen, is very shy and hates noisy tourists!
Because of this a good photo at close range is impossible. They stay far away from the banks. To succeed you need heavy and expensive long paparazzi lenses on high-end or professional cameras. But shooting photos from a boat with long lenses is also very difficult because the boat is rocking and on the river banks you are attacked by many mosquitoes. Fortunately, the owner, after hearing our complaints and our welcome efforts of keeping the Proboscis alive, offered to take us the next morning  on a trip on the river. “No other boats with tourists will be on the river that time and you will be able to record the typical Proboscis sounds”. That’s great! Nevertheless I managed today to get a good interview with our skipper with the Sonneratia and several Proboscis in the background. Fauzi proudly shared with us his knowledge about the Proboscis. Nowadays, after a quick search on “Proboscis Monkey” on Google, you’ll find a lot more info and official literature. Fauzi did not know or where the Malaysian name Orang Belanda came from. We had to tell him! He was pleased to hear from us Dutchies that the Proboscis was given this common name because the early Dutch missionaries and sailors from Holland (Belanda) showed a big resemblance with their big noses and big round stomachs. 
 

Really great were Fauzi’s Proboscis vocal imitations.
We recorded several Proboscis sounds for our coming DVD production. He let us hear the warning sounds with a closed nose, a kind of …. ah ah ah ah. The dominant male calling a female is another nice nasal two-horn trumpet sound. During the mating season the male sounds are like wow, wow, wow (almost human ha-ha). According to Fauzi the Proboscis mates 20 times a day in mating time and his shiny long red penis stays in erection almost all day. The top of it sticking in his hairy belly. Remember, his harem consists of about 8-12 beautiful short-nosed Proboscis Lady Monkeys. A lot of labour….
The sound made when challenging another male for a fight is like a nasal pow, pow.  While Fauzi was  demonstrating these sounds, you could hear the real Proboscis natural angry reaction in the background. Obviously he thought that it was another male and suspected this other Proboscis intended to pinch one of his harem ladies!

PROBOSCIS MONKEY VOCAL COMMUNICATION:

growls: These calls are made by adult males and this functions to calm down another member of the group.

honks: These calls are made by adult males of the group. This functions as an aggressive call which threats other members of the group, and is also made in the presence of predators.

shrieks: These calls are given by juveniles of both sexes and adult females. This is emitted when the individual is agitated or excited.

scream: This vocalization is heard during agonistic interactions (Ruhiyat, 1986). This call is heard during feeding bouts and at night during sleep (Ruhiyat, 1986).
 

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/

Continue to next blogs here 

Sunday 5 march 2006

PALM OIL enemy number one
PALM OIL enemy number one of Borneo and Indonesian tropical rainforest.

This is the header of an article in the Sunday Borneo Post today. Yesterday I mentioned the enormous palm oil plantations here in Sabah Borneo. In this local newspaper it indicated that Indonesia will soon take the lead and be the world’s number one in producing palm oil for the booming demand in margarine, lipstick, ice-cream, shampoo, chocolate, car/motor oil etc. The plantations are devouring the rainforest with our dear Proboscis Monkeys and other endangered animals such as the Orang-utang, Gibbons, Borneo Elephant, the Rhino Hornbill (their own national symbol) and even tigers. All pretty soon sent to extinction. Mr. Fitrian Ardiansyah from conservation group WWF stated: Indonesia is losing its rainforest at a rate of approximately four football fields per minute. Governments are only looking at the profits.
This sector earned 4 billion dollars exporting palm oil in 2004. Another bad effect is that these companies just plunder the forests. The valuable tropical trees are cut down and then quickly collected by helicopters. The devastated areas are left as wasteland and further plantation operations of the palm oil trees are often halted. For example: in West Kalimantan province at the Indonesian Part of Borneo authorities have authorised 2.5 million hectares to be cleared in the past five years but only one million has been actually planted.
The market awareness on the environmental issues is much more intense in Europe than in China. Positive news comes from the World Bank and some private banks, they refuse to finance palm-oil projects detrimental to primary forests with high ecological value!
We hope you can help us and bring this problem and this blog under the eyes of your friends and politicians in your country.  Make people aware of these problems as we like to do with this blog and photos. Borneo and Indonesia are (were) beautiful, very attractive and interesting for tourist travellers. But for how long? If all wild-life has gone, what is the result? Guess what. Yesterday Malaysia Minister of Tourism Datuk Mansor declared 2007 as “ Visit Malaysia Year”.  Estimated tourists 20.1 million. Revenue 11 billion Euros. Let’s hope they understand that many tourists (and the next generations)  will come for the natural, original environment, rainforest, underwater world, birds, primates like the Orang-utang and of course our Proboscis Monkey and they will not be keen on a Malaysia spoilt by oil palm plantations!
 

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/

Proboscis Monkey in logo Rainforest Lodge but not one there.
Date: 4 march 2006

On their homepage the owners of the luxury Borneo Rainforest Lodge at Danum Valley use ‘our’ Proboscis Monkey as a logo. As if one could see them here. Forget it. Our guide explained: about 6 years ago after deportation (with physically big problems for sure) they all left this part of the dense forest, searching for their life-supporting trees and leaves elsewhere. We only saw some Orang-utangs which consume less specific food. Many people visiting this lodge will not see one animal. You only hear the beautiful constant jungle sounds of frogs, cicadas, some birds and in the morning the beautiful song of some gibbons. If you are very lucky you can hear and see their flying national symbol the big Rhino Hornbill bird. Not one Borneo Rainforest Staff member could acknowledge and promise me to remove the Proboscis Monkey from their homepage….they better put him as a logo in a coffin instead of a circle.

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/

Date: 3 march 2006
Place: Borneo Rainforest Lodge Danum Valley.

Today we are visiting Borneo Rainforest to see what is left of it and how we can put a stop to declining population of our Proboscis Monkey also called here the Orang Belanda. We are also attracted to this place by the Proboscis Logo on their homepage. (So are they actually also there? Will we see them?). After a period of heavy rainfall during the last couple of  weeks of February, the main tar-roads and bridges were partly destroyed. Roads are being reconstructed. So we had to take an alternative muddy road. From the small airport in Lahad Datu to this fully booked Rainforest Lodge took us about three hours in a four wheel-drive through the oil palm plantations. Some other guests came by bus from Kota Kinabalu which took them seven hours. A very depressing trip. All you see left and right of the road is palm oil trees. The jungle is gone. No birds, no monkeys, no butterflies, nothing else but palm oil trees, everywhere you look. All planted by Malaysian and Indonesian human hands. It made us very sad to see with our own eyes the unbelievable destruction of the Sabah jungle.
Every piece of the ancient first and second category jungle has been removed for the benefit of profit money for Malaysian and Indonesian companies. To clear the rainforest (still going on) all wildlife species had to move or famish. Many of these poor animals got burned down with the forest or died from starvation missing their habitat with special daily diets. Our beloved vegetarian the Proboscis Monkey eats mainly leaves of one tree. Only in swamp areas and lagoons they can find leaves of the trees which the exclusively live on. It is their major diet. That is why they could never survive elsewhere or in Zoos. A 1997 attempt to do so with about 100 Proboscis Monkeys failed. (Read the KSBK report). Not a single one of he deported Proboscis survived in zoos in Surabaya and Toronto Zoo. Some call all this a primate genocide.
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/

Jan van der Meer is a wildlife photographer travelling now in Borneo with his wife. He is shooting stunning images like this one!

Ph. copyright: Jan van der Meer 2006
www.orang-belanda.hyves.nl

I am a retired Anthropologist whose has started working with people in Borneo to preserve what is left of the natural and semi-natural habitat, etc. Borneo has created 10 Forest Management Units, but the details of the administration of those units is currently being considered. They are, along with the National parks and preserves, the Proboscis Monkey’s best chance for survival. If you would like to learn more about the Proboscis Monkey there are two books that I know of and both of them are for sale at Borneo Books which has its own website. The owner, is a retired Biologist whose speciality is upper-canopy environments.

Hi everybody!

this is the ProboscisMonkey.org BLOG: this is our modern agora, the “Piazza” where we can meet and share ideas…just comments of u want. But there’s no much time to talk, we must THINK QUICK, our Proboscis Monkeys are disappearing fast, the number of them is now a few thousands, and I underline they can only live in Borneo, and they dye of depression if put in zoos. They can’t be fed properly, too.

We need a sponsor: a famous actress, actor, pop star who can be our “patron” and give money and help, or just talk on a tv show about the monkeys…or just put on a tshirt during a concert.

People don’t follow me or you, follow pop stars and movie or tv celebs.

Scientists dears stay with us too, don’t stay in your world apart. I want a micro world of “us”: the people fashinated by Proboscis Monkeys. A little “utopia” on the Net, with people with good mind and heart and passionate about our aim.

Also, in this blog I’ll put the nice letters I received from elementary school children, who want to help too.

Let’s think together, let’s think fast.

Maybe you are a Rolling Stone’s relative (to make an example) or a multinational’s manager, maybe you know somebody who knows the personal email of somedody who can boost this project. A football player…..anybody popular.

This is not being superficial, understand me, it’s marketing!

We have to advertise the animal, it ’s still too unknown. This makes me so sad: to dye in silence, our Orang Belanda are disappearing and billions of people just won’t notice!

Extinction means death forever. And what is worse, is that I’m starting to think that we deserve it, as human beings, we deserve to loose the beautiful creatures of the Planet, which is not “our” Planet. Is all creature’s Planet. Rethoric, but true.

Kristina