Wildlife of Borneo

The main reason I wanted to visit Borneo for so long, was to see Orang Utans in the wild. During my jungle time we did manage to make the most of a dry morning and get out for a dawn boat ride, and fortunately succeeded in spotting one in some trees. We also saw a big family of Probiscus monkeys too, and plenty of long tailed monkeys along with lots of other interesting creatures. But after packing down our muddy camp and leaving without a trace, we moved on to Sandakan, where, from there we got into a another boat and set off for Turtle Island. This is a collection of three real desert islands type places, surrounded entirely by bright yellow sand in the clear blue waters just off from the Phillipines border. These islands are a protected conservation area for the survival of the turtles. Every night up to 80 of the animals crawl ashore to lay 40-120 eggs in the beach before covering them over and returning back to the sea.

Only one of the islands is open to visitors, and during the day there isn't much to do other than snorkel or relax of the beach. But in the evening, every visitor (only about 25 of them) waits in the canteen for the call of 'Turtle Time!'. Then from there, be it 9pm, 3am, or anything in between, we drop everything and go out to watch the process as one of the turtles lays her eggs as the ranger sneakily steals them whilst she looks the other way, before they get buried somewhere else safe from lizzards and other preditors. Finally we're able to watch as a freshly hatched batch of eggs from two months prior get realeased into sea.

The eggs are buried in a pen filled with mesh cylinders, one batch of eggs lie below each cylinder. During the day there's not much to see, just sand, but once the sun goes down, up to 30 of this cylinders fill with mini turtles who'd just clawed their way to the surface. For me, that was the best bit of the evening. One minute there's nothing, then all of a sudden there are hundereds of turtles everywhere. Most pop up with their mesh pen, and a ranger gathers them into washing baskets. I saw him fill three right to the top. He doesn't wash them though, just carries them to the water. Apparently the survival rate of baby turtles is incredibly low, 1% or something even less maybe, and I can see why, some hatchlings were reappearing back up the beach after mistaking the lights of the main lodge for the moon...good luck little ones, you're going to need it!

After turtle island, it was another really early start to get oursleves back over to main land Borneo and to Sepilok Orang Utan Rehibilitation Center to catch the morning feeding time. Only three Orang Utans came for their breakfast of bananas and milk, but it was cool to see them clamber their way out of the trees as they slowly get closer. The Center is good, mostly rainforest with one viewing area, so when the Orang Utans feel ready, they can venture further out into the woodlands and fend entirely for themselves. I like Orang Utans, I think they would be my favourite, but I also took the opportunity to visit a Probiscus Monkey Sanctuary and see the big-nosed creatures a bit closer up. This sanctuary was good too, as again the monkeys were free to roam the rainforest, but 3 families and group of batchelers decided to stay closer by. It was intersting and clear to see how the four groups interacted and the hirachy of importance between not just them as collectives, but between the individuals with in their circles too.

As much as I liked all the creatures mentioned in this post, I've decided to head it up with a picture of a generic pest of a monkey.