Author: Katie King

Science & Society: Solutions to Global Challenges – workshop exploring public attitudes to global environmental challenges in Malaysia

Researchers at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University in collaboration with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership (SEARRP) are conducting two workshops for research to explore environmental challenges in Malaysia.

We are interested in public attitudes to global environmental issues and how to tackle them. We will be conducting a deliberation session to explore this topic which will entail guided group discussions, similar to a focus group discussion. Do not worry if you are unsure or do not know much about this topic. We want your opinions and perspectives!

Register here.

For more information, please contact Melissa Payne at melissajpayne@gmail.com.

Group Picture of Permian Global Staff & SEARRP RAs at recent training course

The Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project (KRCP) staff have been busy with a training course conducted at Danum Valley Field Centre last month.  Permian Global biodiversity and acoustic sensor experts, Dr Sunarto and Dr Joshua Taylor, conducted a three-day training course to teach SEARRP Research Assistants (RAs) how to manage, monitor, and evaluate biodiversity data collected by the KRCP.

Dr Joshua introduced a new system for handling acoustic sensors using a song meter that records at dusk and dawn. In addition to teaching data management skills, the training covered how to handle and exchange micro SD cards efficiently. As part of the project, these skills will be necessary for receiving, organising, and collecting data for each site.

An additional session was conducted by Dr Sunarto to refresh and improve the RAs skills for installing camera traps. The camera traps will be used in riparian areas, carbon plots, and will be installed a different heights and elevations to obtain a wide variety of data from the sites. This project concept was designed by Dr Sarah Scriven and will be an incredibly helpful addition to the biodiversity monitoring plan established for the KRCP. We now feel that our staff are trained with these newly learned skills that will allow them to maximise their work outputs in the field!

Demonstration from Philip Ulok – the KRCP project manager – on setting up acoustic trap to the SEARRP staff

Philop Ulok training the RAs on inserting the micro SD Card efficiently in to the camera traps

Song meter acoustic sensors that are ready to be installed!

Kew Gardens Field Course – Danum Valley Field Centre 2023

Kew Gardens recently sent it’s first field course to Danum Valley Field Centre! The group was led by two lecturers – Dr Kalsum Mohd Yusa and Dr Katherine Ann from Kew Gardens. The two week programme was filled with an excellent mix of interesting lectures and hands-on activities in the surrounding forest. The students worked together with SEARRP’s most experienced Research Assistants to learn how to set dung beetle, butterfly and light traps and a set a plot for looking at nocturnal termite activity. The students also tested out the Forest Integrated Assessment (FIA) tool, which enables non-experts to successfully assess forest quality by using the application.

Dung beetle trap

Insect survey

Evening Light Trap

Lucky Kew Gardens Field Course Students got to see Elephants!

Students had the chance to visit Innoprise-FACE Rainforest Rehabilitation Project (INFAPRO), to learn about the diversity of mushrooms with a senior lecturer from Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), Dr Jaya Seelan. While at INFAPRO the students visited old logging sites (Coupe 88 and Coupe 89) that were intensively logged in the 1980s but have been part of the forest rehabilitation programme since 1992. During the visit, the students were amazed to see the variety of species that have returned as a result of the rehabilitation project including insects, dipterocarp trees, birds and other rare wildlife. We are thrilled that Kew Gardens chose to work with SEARRP to host their first Danum Field Course and we are looking forward to welcoming the back in the near future!

Visit to INFAPRO with Kew Gardens field course group and Dr Jaya from UMS

Student Group from SMK Kinabutan, with Trainers from Yaysasan Sabah, SEARRP and S4 Swansea University at Pandanus Trail

We are very excited to announce that the Environmental Education Kembara Rimba Taliwas programme has started it’s second phase – the school field trips! The programme is a 3-day/2 night immersive exercise at the Taliwas River and Conservation Area (TRCA), that has both classroom and field-based activities for the student participants. The SEARRP Environmental Education and Outreach team and the S4 Swansea University team recently hosted the first of eight school groups at TRCA and the Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Kinabutan from Tawau was the first school to get to participate in this programme.  There were a total of 30 students and 2 teachers from SMK Kinabutan, and the EE sessions were conducted by Yayasan Sabah Forest Rangers and SEARRP Research Assistants who have just undergone our ‘Train-the-Trainers’ programme.

Classroom activities with students from Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Kinabutan, Tawau

Students identifying macroinvertebrates for the Hands-on activity Living Rivers

Students identifying plant functional groups in for Activity 3- Why are my leaves that shape?

The Kembara Rimba Taliwas programme is an interactive and effective environmental education initiative that aims to make complex scientific information about the environment and climate change accessible and relevant to the next generation of environmental leaders. The programme offers classroom tutorials, hands-on activities in the field and fun interactive extracurricular activities such as arts and craft sessions and live performances presented by each student group. The feedback from our first school group was incredibly positive and we are excited to host the next seven schools!

This excellent two-year project is supported by the National Geographic Society to mentor a new generation of environmental champions through participatory science and capacity building at the Taliwas River Conservation Area.

Arts & Crafts are a great way to teach about the importance of protecting the environment – and it is so fun too!

‘Train-the-Trainers’ Course with participants from Yayasan Sabah & SEARRP Research Assistants

SEARRP recently held the first Kembara Rimba Taliwas  Environmental Education ‘Train-the-Trainers’ programme at the Taliwas River and Conservation Area (TRCA) located near Danum Valley Field Centre. The focus of this training was to improve individual trainers understanding of topic matters pertaining to Environmental Education, so that they would be able to teach this information to students in the future. The training programme used EE materials and content that was created by the S4 team from Swansea University and these tools will be available to the upcoming student groups that are joining the environmental education courses at TRCA.

Trainers conducting the hands-on activity: Living Rivers

The ‘Train-the-Trainers’ programme worked with participants fromYayasan Sabah and SEARRP to improve their capacity and empower them to engage students in discovering rainforest biodiversity and importance of forest conservation. The S4 team applied their expertise in training and outreach to help the participants increase their skills in giving presentations, how to successfully communicate information on the EE subject materials, and how to come together to work as a team.

Train-the-Trainers preparing a quadrant sampling point for the Hands-on Activity – Why are my leaves that shape?

The participants did an excellent job at engaging with all of these activities and have come away with valuable skills that will help them to be successful  environmental educators. The training was led by SEARRP’s Environmental Education & Outreach Manager, Imelda Geoffrey and was assisted by SEARRP’s Deputy Director Melissa Payne, as well as Paige Jennings and Rachel Tudor from the S4 team of Swansea University.

‘Train-the-Trainers’ participants learning presentation skills from the S4 team from Swansea University

‘Train-the-Trainer’ participants presenting the new information that they have learned.

It was an exciting and interactive three-day training course with a total of 17 participants from Yayasan Sabah and SEARRP. We are so proud of the significant progress that the participants have made throughout the training and we can’t wait to see their work in action when they apply the skills that they have learned to training young Sabahan students!

Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project Biodiversity Data Management and Analysis Workshop

Between January 14-19 2023, the Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project hosted a Biodiversity Data Management and Analysis Workshop at Danum Valley Field Centre. The workshop was a collaboration between SEARRP, the Tropical Ecology & Entomology (TEE) Lab of the Asian School of the Environment (ASE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU)  and was sponsored by Permian Global. The Kuamut Rainforest Conservation Project aims to establish a Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) project involving 80,000 hectares of tropical forests within the Kuamut Forest Reserve, and among its top priorities is biodiversity conservation, of which biodiversity monitoring is a key component. The goal of this workshop was to ensure that the KRCP generates well-managed, high-quality, and accurate biodiversity data from field monitoring activities and produces outputs and analyses needed for future monitoring reports. The workshop covered biodiversity monitoring activities such as camera trapping, acoustic monitoring, the Forest Integrity Assessment (FIA) tool, and dung-beetle sampling. Read more about this workshop here and watch this space for more information on this exciting project!

OECM site briefing and assessment with local community on Larapan Island, Semporna

With the support and facilitation by Green Semporna and WWF Semporna, the SEARRP team recently initiated discussions to introduce the Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECM) concept and project to the local community of Larapan Island, Semporna. Together, the groups explored ways that the community could assess their marine area as a potential OECM site, and SEARRP took the opportunity to formally invite the local community to join in the OECM initiative.

OECM discussions with the Larapan Community organisers and youth group

SEARRP met with Mad Rinta, the programme coordinator, Eddie, a member of the Kelab Belia Larapan, as well as youth members of the island community to discuss the potentials of OECM, the ongoing conservation activities on the island and marine waters, their waste management programme and the current plans to develop and document their community protocol. Overall, the community representatives showed great interest in the programme and together we developed a simple case study of their marine patrolling area (from the island coastline and along the continental shelf around the island) which we will assess against the OECM criteria in the future.

Beautiful Larapan Island in Semporna District

The community is involved in ongoing conservation activities on the island and the surrounding marine area

Volunteer students from James Cook University had the opportunity to test the Environmental Education programme activities that we have designed for Malaysian students in Sabah.

Last week the SEARRP team joined volunteer students from James Cook University in North Queensland to test run the Environmental Education(EE) programme activities designed for the EE Kembara Rimba Taliwas project slated to begin in 2023.   The Kembara Rimba Taliwas project is an ongoing EE initiative that began in 2018 as a partnership between SEARRP, the Sabah Foundation and the S4 team from Swansea University, with the aim of creating an EE outreach programme for young Malaysian students from eight schools and three different districts on the East coast of Sabah (Kinabatangan, Lahad Datu, Tawau).

This trial programme was divided into two parts – class work and field based activities. The classroom activities were predominantly information sessions where students learned about the biodiversity of the area and the field work that they were going to be practising, with a heavy dose of health and safety tutorials. While the field work focussed on four primary activities: The Living River, Life in a Biocube, What’s my Job and Forest Structure.

JCU student collection water samples for the Living River field work activity

JCU students investigating their selected biocube

The first activity, Living River, invited students to identify different macroinvertebrate groups that help to predict the health of the river. This activity was conducted at the Tambun River in the Danum Valley Field Centre (DVFC), a pristine rainforest, where students took water samples and analysed them in groups in order to draw conclusion about the health of the water ecosystem.

The second activity, Life in a Biocube, allowed students to identify and explore the living organisms in a selected biocube along a riverbank or on the forest floor. This gave them the chance to gather in-depth information and focus on the small to large organisms living within a single biocube of a rainforest ecosystem.

The final day of  fieldwork combined the What’s my Job and Forest Structure activities. Together with the help of SEARRP Research Assistants, the JCU students ventured to the Nature Trail inside the Danum Valley Conservation Area to identify animals and determine the roles that they play in the forest ecosystem. Based on this experience, the students were asked to draw the Forest Structure that they observed using their new found knowledge and personal creativity. Prizes were given for the top 5 winners!

JCU students exploring the Nature Trail at DVFC assessing the role of animals in the surrounding forests

Drawing competition for the Forest Structure activity

At night the learning wasn’t over! SEARRP Deputy Director, Melissa Payne, and SEARRP Environmental Education and Outreach Manager, Imelda Geoffrey, led language lessons in Bahasa Melayu for the JCU students. The first 90 minute lessons focussed on basic Malaysian words, introductions and sentence construction that were taught through role play, games and songs. The second class concentrated on learning the Malaysian words for the plants and animals that the students had been researching all day. The consensus from the group was that the language lessons were an interesting, important and helpful addition to the course.

We have had an amazing time with the JCU volunteers and are so thankful for their participation on The Kembara Rimba Taliwas programme activities. They have provided us with extremely valuable feedback on how to improve the course work, delivery and activities, which will help us to make the necessary adjustments for the upcoming programme with local schools in 2023.

Language classes proved to be a massive hit with the JCU students

Plantation management practices of independent oil palm smallholders in Central Kalimantan: exploring the potential and limitations of standards for Good Agricultural Practices       Photo Credit – Grace Sibarani

The SEnSOR Programme’s smallholder research team has released new findings from their study into the potential and limitations of standards for Good Agricultural Practice for independent oil palm smallholders. The team investigated how different types of smallholders managed their plantations and whether the Good Agricultural Practice requirements for RSPO certification were suitable for the smallholder situation. Read the science-for-policy brief here.