I was at Temenggor Forest Reserve, Perak. Malaysia. At Perak Integrated Timber Complex (PITC) here, tall giant dipterocarp trees have been selective logged for almost a decade now. The event that will remain with me forever is seeing a 2-m girth dipterocarp tree stoop to ground within ten minutes of work with a chainsaw. But more about that later. First, some good memories from the time there.
We all slept in two-person tents except a few who got rooms. Pasoh Forest Reserve camp was a bed and breakfast resort in comparison with the field conditions at PITC; there was no electricity, generators were turned on from 6 pm till midnight, no phones and internet, no shops 30 km in any direction. In short, it was perfect! Our daily activity included going to the river for a swim and wash-up. After noticing that there were only two bathrooms, some of us preferred a slippery walk to the river twice a day; the river was cold and beautiful and the swim there was refreshing. Mornings we walk sleepily to the river 200 m away and the evenings we walk tired from the proceedings of the day; but the river was always something to look forward to. On our first walk to the river, Dtoon and I fell right on our bottoms and it was a lesson learnt there on to tread carefully. In the beginning Pradeep from Sri Lanka, Dtoon from Thailand, Param from Bangalore and I were the few who colonised the river, but in the end it was so much fun there was none of us who never went to the river for a wash.
Evenings after field work we would play Sepak-takro, a south-east Asian version of volleyball, except that you cannot use hands, only the chest, head and feet, like in football. We thought it would take us weeks to learn, but after just a couple of days we were not too bad! The locals who can even smash the takro with a banana kick must have surely had some laughs though!
We also saw an Orang asli community village, which looked similar to villages in north-east India or other parts of India. Presently an epidemic of Dengue and malaria was on in the village, so we were not allowed to meet them.
Our group project (Lillian, Por, and me) was on butterflies. The three days we got lost, found our way, fell, slipped, missed butterflies, and caught butterflies, all in all super fun! At the end of three day data collection we found that forest and roads harbour distinct butterfly communities and we did some statistical-analysis and got these clear patterns. The event I wil never forget is a close encounter with a Malayan tree nymph.
We were supposed to catch one individual per species, kill it by placing inside a bottle with formaldehyde gas and mount each specimen onto an entomologists’ board. So the tree nymph that rarely descends two metres above ground was right in front of me, I instinctively swung the butterfly net I had, but it escaped mainly due to the excitement I was in, and then I caught him again but this time the wrong side of the net and all the while the two project partners were screaming ‘catch it catch it’. But even the second round failed and by then the nymph figured we were upto no good and I was happy that he escaped, would have been a pity to kill such a beautiful large slow-moving butterfly. We inventorised 45 species overall in our project which is high diversity to be encountered in just three days.
Then was the day I will never forget. We visited sector 5 of the forest where selective logging was being undertaken. The men chose a large tree in a business-as-usual way and we were wondering if they would really do it, they did. Two photographs of the forest, one with the tree and one without, notice the canopy gap made in ten minutes.
Moving on to less tragiv memories, we were also lucky to meet Dr. Christine Fletcher who has worked many years on bats so she and her team actually set out harp-traps and we saw three species of insectivorous bats up-close.
The last day we packed up and were ready to leave with mostly good memories, one very bad one. We were also given various talks about how the system is designed and how they follow the rotation method which ensures significant tracts of forests are left, but none of these convinced us. While the big tree fell, it also took down three other trees of medium size. I doubt I can be ever convinced that bringing down large trees selectively can help in maintaining a forest.
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