Third Tawau Hills Park Wildlife Expedition
TAWAU: 1 Stop Borneo Wildlife in collaboration with Sabah Parks is embarking on another wildlife survey at Tawau Hills Park, a state park in the east coast of Borneo, from January 22-31.
It is being led by Shavez Cheema and Chun Xing Wong under the supervision of Dr John Payne. Team members also include Koid Qian Qun.
Adventure Alternative Borneo, a local responsible nature tourism company is supporting this particular wildlife expedition and some of the objectives of this trip are to look for new wildlife discoveries, propose new conservation strategies for the state of Sabah, new conservation tourism destinations within Sabah and to publish the new Tawau Hills book which is being researched by Sabah Parks with 1StopBorneo Wildlife.
This wildlife expedition aims to compare mammals and ground bird diversity in different microhabitats between lowland and lower montane rainforest in Tawau Hills Park. This expedition also seeks to find anything new and interesting in this state park.
"A target for us is that in one year’s time the team will work on scientific publications as well as public friendly informative books regarding the finds and about the park itself.
"A centralized database for the fauna found in the park is also being created and we are inviting anyone from the public who has any data and knowledge on fauna such as mammals, birds, snakes, frogs, turtles from the state park and would like to collaborate on this project," said 1StopBorneo Wildlife in a statement yesterday.
The NGO hopes to expand the 300+ species of birds, 80 species of mammals, 60+ species of frogs database as well.
Wildlife experts and naturalists include Chien Lee, Lars Fehlandt Michael Gordon, Bat experts Isham Azhar and Juliana Senawi. John Bakar, a bird expert, are also part of the expedition.
Fifteen camera traps have been deployed by the team with the assistance of Sabah Parks research team at Tawau Hills Park.
Anyone who is interested to join the expedition and contribute data can email 1stopborneo@ gmail.com or log on to Facebook and visit ‘1stopborneo wildlife’.