Batu Puteh

 

Overview:

 

Our wildlife and environmental project takes you to the community of Batu Puteh on the mighty Kinabatangan River.  This chocolate brown tributary flows from the very heart of North Borneo and along its banks is home to a plethora of animals, insects and communities.  The community of Batu Puteh has developed a mini eco tourism project here and as well as developing this they are working hard to preserve and re-generate a nearby forest reserve.  Along the banks of the river you will see crocodiles, up to 8 species of ape, wild boar, occasional elephants and numerous bird and aquatic life. 

 

Background:

 

For a millennia the indigenous ”Sungai” (River) people of the Lower Kinabatangan River have been living off the rainforest for food, medicine, household commodities and products of trade. This world changed dramatically from the 1960's onwards, with the advent of mechanised extraction of the forest’s timber resources. The ensuing rapid reduction of traditional forest resources forced many local people into a spiraling trap of dependence on timber as the only remaining viable source of trade. With the final conversion of large tracts of lowland forests of the Lower Kinabatangan throughout the 1980s into permanent agricultural crops, many local people were then forced to poach timber and other forest products to eek out an existence. The MESCOT (Model of Ecologically Sustainable Community Tourism) Initiative was started in 1996 by a group of about 30 visionary and dedicated individuals from the different villages of Batu Puteh to create an alternative medium of income generation for the people of the area, while in the process protecting the last remaining vestige of rainforest and traditional indigenous cultural heritage.

The key objectives of the MESCOT Initiative are to develop an alternative path of co-existence with the remaining rainforest resources and generate a sustainable long-term economic path for income generation; the core activity chosen by the MESCOT group was eco-tourism. It was hoped that this activity would be the key to raising income in this poor and remote rural community, increase the economic value of a depleted forest resource, and, in the process, raise funds to support the protection and restoration of the last remaining wetland forests and wildlife of the area. MESCOT’s scope was broadened in 1998 when drought induced forest fires ravaged parts of the remaining natural forests surrounding the village. The MESCOT group voluntarily engaged to fight these fires and in the aftermath decided it critical to rehabilitate the degraded wetland forests and critical wildlife habitats and corridors. At the time, these steps were ground-breaking, as previously little was known about the complex floodplain forest tapestry and the different rainforest types of the area.

The mainstay of the eco tourism project is a lodge, which sits on the edge of a large oxbow lake formed by the former course of the river. The Tungog Lake is of special significance in the Lower Kinabatangan because it is only one of three deep clear-water oxbow lakes within the floodplain, being totally disconnected from the main Kinabatangan River Channel, and is a natural sanctuary for more than 150 native freshwater fish species, and a host of other rare aquatic dependant birds and wildlife. Major floods in early 2000 had a major impact on the lake, introducing an exotic weed to the Kinabatangan called Salvinia molesta. Within two years this exotic noxious floating fern had totally engulfed the surface of the Tungog Lake, which stretches for some 1.5km in length. The devastation immediately noted was the disappearance of the rare diving water-bird the Oriental Darter and the three native Otter species. From all accounts, research and literature, the Tungog Lake was doomed to suffocate under the ferocity of the Salvinia blanketing, decaying and filling up the lake, starving the clear waters of oxygen. With the help of external funding the community have worked extremely hard to control the Salvinia problem. Today, with constant physical effort, they are managing to keep it at bay.

 

The project work at Batu Puteh is centred around their efforts to re-generate the surrounding forest. Although in areas the forest is dense and healthy, in other areas due to flooding, poor soil and some human impacts, the forest has de-generated and allowed secondary growth of smaller plants. These plants have restricted larger trees from taking root and hence the programme aims to help these trees to re-claim the area. This is achieved through firstly clearing selected areas of secondary growth and then planting native species of saplings. These saplings must be grown from locally collected seeds, transplanted and nurtured in a nursery prior to being transported manually into the forest. The clearing, nursery work, planting and subsequent care of the saplings is very labour intensive work, particularly in the hot and sweaty conditions of a Borneo jungle.