It’s been quite a while wasn’t it? I am now back and will be updating this blog more often. This will be my comeback entry.

The Sundaland clouded leopard, touted to be the biggest predator on Borneo Island, was recently caught on film for the first time near Deramakot forest reserve in Sabah.

The cat is previously thought to be similar to the clouded leopard of Sumatra until a 2008 study found them to be from different species.

Cats of Borneo

There are five Bornean cat species in Sabah, all of them found in Deramakot Forest Reserve — the leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis), Sundaland clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi), Bornean bay cat (Pardofelis badia), flat-headed cat (Prionailurus planiceps) and the marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata).

A magazine advertisement on Malaysian palm oil has been banned in the United Kingdom, with UK’s Advertising Standards Agency saying claims made in the ad were “misleading and could not be substantiated.”

Below is the screenshot of the said advertisement, click on it to view the original.

The advertisement, placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, among others claimed that Malaysian palm oil was “sustainable” and contributed to “the alleviation of poverty, especially amongst rural populations.”

The agency acknowledged that efforts have been made to tackle illegal deforestation associated with palm oil plantations but stressed that concerns remained about the “indirect effects” of the palm oil industry’s expansion.

Survival International, the movement for tribal people, has urged the Malaysian government to halt plantations and logging on lands owned by the Penan tribe in Sarawak.

It quoted an unnamed Penan tribe member as welcoming the ban, saying: “Our people welcome the ban on the magazine advert by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. How come the advert claimed that palm oil helps alleviate poverty, when from the very beginning oil palm plantations have destroyed our source of livelihood and made us much poorer? A lot of people are hungry every day because our forest has been destroyed.”

What palm oil critics do not understand, says MPOC

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Palm Oil Council, in a press release titled “What the critics don’t understand” said the palm oil industry provides jobs and incomes to those who need it; satisfies consumer demand for quality cooking and food ingredients; and is powering a greener energy future across the planet.

“None of these facts is appreciated by our critics who come from wealthy developed countries and have no sense of the genuine challenges facing the developing world,” MPOC CEO Dr Yusof Basiron said.

Sarawak, a state not always known for its wildlife, is set to join the “orang utan hall of fame”.

The orang utan population in the state now stands at 2,500 and plans are afoot to increase its population through conservation and sustainable development, an official said.

State forestry director Len Talif Salleh said orang utan population had been stable for some years, which he said was a testimony to the state’s success in conservation.

“We want to increase the population to three, four or even five thousand in the years to come,” he said.

WWF Malaysia and the state government of Sabah, the Malaysian state on Borneo island, have signed an agreement to restore almost 1,000 hectares of degraded land in the Heart of Borneo as an orangutan habitat.

The five-year agreement, signed this week, is made possible with RM4.35 million (USD1.27 million) grant from the ITOCHU Corporation of Japan, WWF Malaysia said in a statement.

The area covers Ulu Segama where some orangutan populations have become isolated due to logging and other activities as well as the existence of Ulu Segama river that acts as a natural barrier.

Heart of Borneo

The memorandum is part fo the Heart of Borneo initiative to turn a huge portion of Borneo into a conservation area involving Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei.

Conservation group Hutan has estimated there are less than 11,000 orangutans remain in Sabah.

While scouring the Internet, I came across an interesting study which compares the susceptibility of head lice, taken from the United States and Sabah, to permethrin.

Permethrin is a chemical substance used to threat lice infection or “peduculosis” in the US. Below is a photo of head lice, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The conclusion? The Sabah lice are more susceptible to permethrin than the US lice do. In other words, Sabah’s lice are lousy Here is a link to the study.

Scientists at James Cook University and Smithsonian Institution have identified infrastructure such as roads, canals, power lines and gas lines as potentially posing the biggest threat to the world’s tropical rainforests.

“Clearing wide paths in any forest has a strong effect on the ecosystem, but these impacts are particularly acute in tropical rainforests,” said Professor William Laurance, a Distinguished Professor at James Cook University and co-author of a paper on the impact of roads in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

The other authors of the paper are Dr Susan Laurance, a biologist from the Smithsonian and Dr Miriam Goosem, a senior lecturer at James Cook.

Dr Goosem said the team used dozens of existing studies done in the Amazon, Australasia and Central Africa to emphasize that roads are the number one threat to the world’s tropical rainforests.

“We believe that maintaining large areas of intact forests without roads should be highest priority of conservationists worldwide,” she said, adding that some species strongly avoid forest edges and are unable to traverse even narrow forest clearings.

“Other tropical species are susceptible to hunting, increased predation, invasive species and being killed by vehicles.”

She said that limiting the width of roads, reducing vehicle speeds and maintaining a continuous forest canopy above roads were ways to reduce the impact on tropical rainforests.

Meanwhile, Dr Susan Laurance said animals see roads as barriers. “A striking feature of tropical forests is the high proportion of species that tend to avoid even narrow clearings or forest edges. Many species – such as those that are completely arboreal, adapted to flying in dense forests, or depend on specialized food resources – are halted by linear clearings.”

There are those species, however, that do not avoid roads or other such clearings, resulting in what the scientists call “road-related mortality.”

[The original press release, titled "Roads top threat to rainforests" can be found here]

Animal expert Jack Hanna is currently in Borneo as part of his two-week tour of Sabah, Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia where he will be shooting wildlife for his “Jack Hanna’s Into The Wild” television show.

The 62-year-old and crew members will film orang utans, sunbears, proboscis monkeys and pygmy elephants in their natural habitat in Sabah and will later head for Sarawak and Peninsular Malaysia. You can follow Jungle Jack’s adventure on Twitter or Facebook.

Hanna, whose visit to Malaysia is at the invitation of Tourism Malaysia, told the media in Kota Kinabalu, the capital city of Sabah, that he had always wanted to visit Malaysia but was delayed due to his tight schedules.

A group of vigilantes is threatening to invade Malaysia by “air, sea and land”, with the Malaysian states on Borneo island — Sabah and Sarawak — being the main targets.

The invasion was supposed to take place yesterday, involving 1,500 men with sharpened bamboo poles, bows and arrows, but had been postponed to today, according to the Malaysian Insider.

They should instead go to Padang and help the earthquake victims there.

I’ve done translating part of the report on the rape of Penan girls and women in the interior of Sarawak but now having a second thought about posting it online.