FWD: Tracking small hunters in the jungles of Pahang

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This article is from The Star Online (http://thestar.com.my)

URL:

http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2005/5/31/features/10948899 & sec=\

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Tuesday May 31, 2005

Tracking small hunters in the jungles of Pahang

By MICHAEL CHEANG

 

Andy Jennings is chasing a certain female called Sally. He has tailed her for

over an hour and is not giving up until he finds her hiding place.

 

Now, before anyone starts making naughty assumptions, take note that Jennings

is a carnivore biologist; and “Sally” is the nickname for a female short-tailed

mongoose that he is studying as part of the Malaysian Carnivore Project at the

Krau Wildlife Reserve in Pahang.

 

The short-tailed mongoose (Herpetes brachyurus) is a fairly common species in

Peninsular Malaysia but like many other small carnivores found in Krau, has

never been studied before. Jennings’s project aims to rectify this oversight.

 

The Malaysia Carnivore Project kicked off last July to investigate the ecology

of carnivore species within Krau. Jennings’s team will study the animals’

habitat requirements, food sources and inter-relationships between species.

 

 

 

Krau is the second largest wildlife reserve in the peninsula, and spans a

protected area of 60,349ha made up of lowland, riverine, and montane forests. It

contains one of the largest remaining blocks of lowland forest here and supports

extensive plant communities and animal species that are severely threatened due

to forest clearance and disturbance.

 

Of the original 6.5 million ha of lowland forest in Peninsular Malaysia, less

than 800,000ha remains. Although Krau currently does not face any major problems

with logging, it is threatened by the expansion of surrounding oil palm estates.

 

The reserve is currently managed mainly for wildlife conservation in order to

protect threatened habitats and to meet the requirements of specific animal and

plant species. Some 115 mammal species have been observed there. Among them are

17 species of carnivores, such as mongooses, cats, otters, civets and bears.

There are also tigers in Krau, but only an estimated five or six are left.

 

<b>Baiting the animals</b>

 

This may be his first project in Malaysia but Jennings is no stranger to the

carnivores of South-East Asia, having previously studied carnivore ecology in

Sulawesi, United States and South America.

 

Before coming to Krau, Jennings knew what kind of animals to expect based

on a 2001 study by Dr Ruth Laidlaw, who had set camera traps all over the

reserve for a month.

 

“From Dr Laidlaw’s findings, we pretty much knew what to expect when we came

here,” said Jennings. “However, we are still learning from scratch about how to

trap the animals, what kind of baits to use and so on.”

 

 

 

A typical day during the project starts at 7.30am, when Jennings heads out into

the jungle to check the traps with the help of his trusty assistant – a local

guide named Lah. Usually, Lah is the one who checks the traps (which tend to be

quite far apart sometimes) while Jennings tracks down the movements of the

animals that have been radio collared.

 

Jennings has 33 traps in total, which are in three different sizes. Most of

them are small and medium ones brought in from the United States, while nine

large ones were made in the nearby town of Temerloh. The traps are placed along

animal trails, covered with rattan leaves, and left for a week.

 

The trap is sprung when the animal triggers a metal plate in the middle of the

cage, which it has to step on to get to the bait at the back of the cage. If a

trap does not catch any animals within a week, it is moved to another location.

 

Once an animal is caught, Jennings and Lah get to work. First, they cover the

trap with a black sheet to keep the animal calm. Before opening the cage door,

they close off the animal’s escape route. Once they open the trap, Jennings

pushes the animal gently to the back of the cage (with a homemade contraption

that is essentially a long stick with a board at the end).

 

 

 

He then anaesthetizes the animal by injecting its leg muscle with Zoletil 100,

a fairly safe drug that is commonly used in the United States. The drug takes

about five minutes to take effect, after which the animal will go to sleep for

about 30 to 40 minutes.

 

Taking the sleeping animal out of the cage, he first applies some eye-cream to

the animal’s eyes to make sure its eyes do not dry up, since the animal cannot

blink due to the effects of the drug. Then, he blindfolds the animal so that

sunlight will not damage its eyes. After all that is done, Jennings gets down to

measuring the animal’s size, body temperature and weight, as well as checking

its gender, age and reproductive condition. He then tags the animal’s ears with

a coloured tag to enable identification of the animal should it be trapped

again. Some animals will be given a radio collar.

 

“Each collar gives out a radio signal, each with its own unique frequency,

which I pick up using a receiver,” explained Jennings. “That way, we can find

out more about their habits such as which way they usually go, how large an area

they live in, what kind of habitat they like, how long they stay in one area,

and so on.”

 

Thirty to 40 minutes later, when the animal starts to wake up, it is returned

into the cage. Jennings will release the animal only when the effect of the drug

fully wears off, about three hours later. To avoid stress to the animals, he

does all the processing work in the forest, and does not bring them out of the

forest.

 

<b>Wild discovery</b>

 

Although he sometimes go for weeks without trapping a single animal and

recaptures are fairly common (one particular Malay civet nicknamed Francois has

been caught at least 15 times), Jennings has been a lot luckier this year

compared to last year, when he caught only Malay civets.

 

 

 

This time around, besides seven Malay civets (Viverra tangalunga), he also

trapped two other species – three short-tailed mongooses and two common palm

civets (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus) – all within the first four weeks.

 

Jennings attributes the better catch-rate to the change in bait. He had

switched from a salted fish-fruit combination to a more sumptuous salted fish

and chicken meal. “They seem to prefer chicken a whole lot more,” he said

laughingly.

 

The project is still in its initial stages and Jennings is still learning the

best ways to conduct his research. “During the three-month pilot stage last

year, we were experimenting with traps and baits. We caught only Malay civets

then, mainly because they are quite common and fairly easy to catch because they

live on the ground. Other civet species tend to stay in trees.”

 

So far, his findings are preliminary but ultimately the data from the project

will go a long way in efforts to formulate conservation strategies for small

carnivores as there has never been an extensive study on them even though some

of them are fairly common.

 

 

 

“Most people prefer to study large animals like tigers or elephants, so the

smaller animals have been overlooked. Many people don’t even know what a civet

cat is! It can be quite scary how little we know and how little these animals

have been studied.

 

“They have been seen in the wild but we still don’t know for sure what these

animals are like, because there has been no detailed informative research done

on them. We don’t even know whether certain species are endangered. In fact,

some of the species may disappear without us even knowing about them.

 

“We have to learn more about their ecology and habitat requirements to protect

them before they become endangered. We need to know how much space they need,

what they eat, what food and forest they need. Without these data, we would not

know how to conserve them,” said Jennings.

 

With eight of the 30 species of carnivores recorded in Peninsular Malaysia

listed on the IUCN-World Conservation Union Red List as endangered or

vulnerable, and with Malaysian lowland forests under severe threat from human

activities, it is very likely the data collected in Krau will prove invaluable

in the near future.

 

<LI> The Malaysian Carnivore Project is funded by the Royal Geographical Society

and the Société d’Encouragement pour la Conservation des Animaux Sauvages

(SECAS). It is endorsed by the International Society for Endangered Cats

(Canada) and the Cat Action Treasury (CAT),and supported by the Malaysian

Department of Wildlife and National Parks.

 

To financially support this project and for further information, contact Andy

Jennings at <a

href= " smallcarnivores " >smallcarnivores</a> or got to

the project website at <a

href= " http://http://members.surfbest.net/carnivores (AT) surfbest (DOT) net/index.htm " >http\

://members.surfbest.net/carnivores/index.htm</a>

 

<p>

 

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