Borneo is my first love, and to be able to get the chance to live in the middle of Borneo’s forest is like a dream come true! Here I am, the new Gibbon and Red Langur Scientist for Borneo Nature Foundation.
I arrived last month, but I feel like I’ve work here since forever, that’s how open BNF staff are to me. This is my second time to Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), and I’ve been looking forward to the new experiences that the Sabangau Forest offers me.
This is not my first primate related job. I’ve worked with black crested macaques in Sulawesi and orangutans in Sumatra before I joined BNF. I was not particularly interested in primates before, but during my first job I couldn’t help but fall in love with them!
Although I’ve been to different types of forest, working in peat-swamp forest offers me a new challenge, with all the holes and water (but no hills, yay!) its hard to walk, but I have come to love it in the past few weeks. I saw my first red langur (or kelasi in Dayak language) on my first day and gibbons on my second day. It was fantastic, like a warm welcome from the forest for my first week here in Sabangau.
I have always been interested in animal behaviour, particularly in their social behaviour and group structures. After working with different species of primates, gibbon and red langurs will be interesting new subjects to study, since there is little published information about their social behaviour and group demography in peat-swamp forest.
I am so excited to work with the BNF field staff and, of course, the primates in the upcoming months. So everyone, please stay tuned for more updates from the Gibbon and Red Langur Research Teams in the Sabangau Forest.
