Chasing River Monsters!!...(From My Daily Journal in Berbak NP, Eastern Sumatra)

For people who like watching wildlife TV programmes, the River Monster is one of the best serial TV programs, especially those who like fishing and adventurous sports.This TV programme is brought by Jeremy Wide, a British television presenter and a book author. This guy travels a lot in search for the most fearsome freshwater monsters, tries to catch it and gathers information about people who were attacked by these killers.

Holding a juvenile of  salt water crocodile

So why does it matter?, well I like watching it and just recently had a field work in one of national parks in Sumatra, a peat swamp and lowland forest, located in North-eastern of Sumatra, Indonesia. This TV series and my trip has similar objective which is to save one of the rarest and endangered species of the freshwater giants from extinction and help people understand the important part of these animals for our ecosystem. In our case, the species focus is The Asian narrow-headed soft shell turtle (Chitra javanensis), one of the largest soft shell turtles in the world and endemic to Indonesia. Moreover, the information about this species is very scarce.

It was on a late summer 2014, from June-July, with a researcher from Alaska Zoo US, we headed to one of the locations in Berbak National Park, Air Hitam Laut (AHL) subsection in the Eastern coast as this site was recorded as one of the habitats of this giant soft-shell turtle. However, based on the local people we interviewed, nobody has seen this species in these locations ever. 

Unfortunately, the distribution about this species is still debated by the scientist due to infrequent  researches about it, so more studies related to it are urgently needed. However, based on limited published information about its habitat, this river giant only exist in clear-water rivers with sandy bottom which is very opposite with the condition in Air Hitam Laut  location that has very black water and muddy bottom. But, due to very limited information worldwide about its habitat, we hopefully found this endangered species or maybe other interesting animals in this kind of habitat. So we just carried out our study in this location for almost two months.

May My Life Be Like A Tortoise

As I walk through life, may my steps be like those of a

tortoise, sure and steady.

No matter what obstacle is placed in his path, he will

eventually find a way round, over or under it.

And if any unthinking person should pick him up and

put him down again facing the opposite way, he will

always turn round, find his original path, and head for his

ultimate goal.

May I be covered like the tortoise with a hard, round,

waterproof shell, to protect me from the knocks and bruises

of life and give me shelter from the storms, and should I ever

fall flat on my back, may a friend always be there to turn me

gently on my feet again.

May my skin be like that of a tortoise, thick and leathery,

so that harsh words spoken in anger will not pierce my

heart.

May my heart be like the legs and claws of a tortoise,

sturdy and strong, and no matter how hard, dry or stony the

ground may be, I shall always be able to dig in it and plant

the seeds of happiness, peace and contentment, and may all

the seeds that I plant in my life grow and flower and bear

wondrous fruits. 

And lastly, may my eyes be like those of the tortoise,

shiny and bright, never looking back at the storm clouds

gathered behind, but always looking ahead to a bright and

shiny future.

Inspired by The British Chelonia Group Newsletter, from the book of Tortoise by Peter Young

Welcome to Berbak National Park, Jambi Province

It was a nice but super hot sunny day, we arrived in Sultan Thaha airport in Jambi, Sumatera around 1.00 pm. The airport is not that big but so crowded with people. We were fully loaded with over baggage and We had to pay for 50 kg extra baggage when we were checked in Soekarno-Hatta airport, around 19,000 IDR per kg which is not bad. We then hired a car to drop us at Hotel Sovia, close to BKSDA office in Jalan Arif Rahman Hakim, Jambi.

We went to Berbak NP office in Jambi which is unfortunately quite far from our hotel. Luckily Medi has friends here who are studying in Jambi university. They drove us to the national park office, 20 minutes from hotel by motor cycle. We arrived at 3.15 pm. At least we still had time for meeting with the head of the national park and several staffs to talk about our project for Turtles Conservation.

Me Vs Wild (Sumatran Tiger)

They are very welcomed and gave us information we need. However, we cannot go to the park because we haven't got the SIMAKSI, an entry permit to conservation areas. So we'll just to wait for the permit to be approved by PHKA (Ministry of Forestry) in Jakarta. But before go to the field, we need to give a presentation about our turtle project in the NP's office and hopefully we will get all the information we need to make a plan for this trip.

Based on the information we gathered during the meeting, we probably go to the park using the speed boat from Jambi to Air hitam village, the last village before the national park. From there we will use another boat to the park and stay in a camp which were built by ZSL for Sumatran Tiger Conservation program. The camp is located in the junction of two rivers that we could use for the turtle survey. These rivers also become the traditional fishing zone for local people. They use big bubus to trap the big fish, and sometime they catch soft shell turtle accidentally inside the bubu (fish trap made by bamboo or rattan), based on the park rangers' report. This is a good information for us, at least there is a good opportunity to catch turtles or soft shell turtles in this national park. But, of course, these rivers also home for salt water crocodile and false gharials crocodile and also Sumatran tiger!!, so we better not to risk our life for these turtles.

In the last meeting, I had a chance to get a picture of me and a dry preservation of Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatraensis) in the Head of Balai TN Berbak's office. The tiger was found dead due the electric fence that local people use to keep away of these big cat from their villages. Sadly, this tiger has to die for the sake of the locals' safety. It might be better if they use unharmed methods to keep the safety both human and the wildlife.

Visiting Chitra-chitra (Asian narrow-headed softshell turtle) in Ragunan zoo, Jakarta

Thanks to the technology, now I am able to wander around Indonesian Capital City. The "Busway" application which is built for android system is really help to look around the Bus' routes and the bus' stops in Jakarta, So I won't lost in Jakarta any more, and maybe you too :).

So, we finally made it to Ragunan zoo on Saturday, June the 7th. It was not so many people in the morning so it was a good time to look for the animals especially reptiles and other interesting animals with not so many people around. We went to the reptiles sanctuary first and we saw several species of reptiles such as reticulated python, king cobra, some varanids, turtles and finally we came across chitra chitra, the one we ought to see in this place.

Chitra-chitra in Ragunan Zoo 

They named it Chitra Indica on the sign in the front of the cage, the name that belong to species that only occurs in Pakistan and India, but the picture on the sign looks like Chitra Javanensis, the "Labi-labi raksasa" from Indonesia based on Tim's examination. However, we cannot examine it closely of what it is since it is inside the cage, but it is huge. We could only see that thing from the glass window, and the chitra just stay still like a rock. We waited for quite sometime but it didn't move an inch. Unfortunately, there is not much information about it at the zoo and there was no zookeeper to ask questions.

We then wandered around at the zoo to see other animals. Tim would like also to see Sumatran tiger and salt water crocodile, as these two dudes will be around in Berbak National Park in South-Eastern Sumatra when we do the turtle survey in the coming weeks.

Generally, this is a good zoo where the place is surrounded by trees and rivers even though they are not in a perfect condition. One thing that needs to be improved is to separate different animals in different places. This is because we saw that some different animals are put in one cage and and they only put one name on it. For instance is the monitor lizard is in one cage with Blue-tongued skink from Australia and also a turtle, and the monitor lizard hast lost its tail for some reason. This is not a good sign as it will confuse the visitor about the species name, and the it will also has impacts for both species since they are maybe clash to each other.

Visiting Local Wildlife markets in Jakarta (Pasar Pramuka and Pasar Jatinegara)

I and Tim Lescher (a researcher from Alaskan Zoo, US) visited several animal markets in Jakarta in order to investigate whether they also sell reptiles in this place. The first market we visited was Pasar Pramuka, a popular wildlife market in Jakarta. It took a half hour to get there by Bajai from the place where we stayed in Central Jakarta. Rumour says that this market sell many kinds of wildlife including endangered species from around the world. But, when we arrived there, we only found many kinds of birds and several mammals, but no reptiles. We walked around for several minutes in this market and asked people where to find turtle markets, and they said in Jatinegara Market, which is close by.

We straight away to the second market using bajai, a unique local transportation that has only three tyres. When we arrived there, the animals are sold along the street market, in the side of big main road. Many kinds of exotic animals we could find here such as cats, dogs, birds, civets, iguanas, long tailed monkeys, squirrels, sugar gliders and many more. Finally we found what we are looking for in this place, the reptiles that are being sold here. However, we only found three species of reptiles which are alien species to Indonesia such as Indochinese Snail-eating Turtle (Malayemys subtrijuga), Common Slider (Trachemys Scripta) and Chinese Softshell Turtle (Trionyx sinensis). We tried to ask the vendors about where did they get it, they seemed hesitant to answer and just said that somebody provided it to them. We also asked whether they also have the Labi-labi Bintang or Narrow-headed Softshell Turtle (Chitra chitra javanensis), and they said nothing.

Some of the reptiles that we found that were being sold in Jatinegara Market in Jakarta

However, we did not do our best to get information about the turtles that are being sold here because they are very secretive in this matter. But at lest we got some pictures as evidence by using GoPro camera, and we could manage to get some of these animals photo.

Generally, all theses three species that we found here are not endemic species of Indonesia. I wonder if these animals will bring bad impacts to local inhabitants. Generally speaking that some collectors when they get bored with their pet, they sometime release it to they environment and this species could invade the local species and disturb the ecosystem.

Witnessing the reintroduction of Orangutan in Bukit Batikap Conservation Forest, Central Kalimantan

It was a bright sunny day, just 2 more days for us to leave Bukit Batikap Conservation Forest, Central Kalimantan. Last night was our last observation for herpetofauna survey in this location. Since we had nothing to do, we were requested by BOSF to be involved as volunteers in releasing 8 Orangutan on that day, absolutely we love doing that!!. The released location is located in the downstream of Mosu river, 2 hours boating from the basecamp/Posu River. We went there early in the morning, around 7.30 we left base-camp. Earlier, two boats already gone to the location for some preparation. The sky was so blue and beautiful but the landscape view was quite boring since we have been here for almost three weeks. The view of a dark river water and forest standing along the river. We saw lots of bee hives hanging on big trees. That was a bad sign though for us since this creature has been bothering us everyday in the camp together with their relatives. As expected, the beach in which we had to wait the helicopter that carry the Orang Utan was already full of thousand schools of bees, wasps, flies and other unidentified annoying insects. They were so nasty and were not afraid to human, I got stung several time from below on the feet to the head. Most of us got stunk badly. But the spirit for conservation never goes down, for an only living planet

The First released of orangutan on 20 April 2014

The unique creatures from Bukit Batikap, Central Kalimantan

This post is about some creatures that we cannot identify during the amphibian survey in Central Kalimantan. Some of them are beautiful creatures and some are weird things. I posted some of the pictures and hoping somebody from anywhere could identify them and give a proper scientific name for them. This information could be important for someone who studies it. Or maybe, this pictures will admire somebody of what are there in the Heart of Borneo, beautiful creatures that rarely seen in other places. Just enjoy it. 

Long-nosed butterfly

Fully armed grasshopper