My time as a staff member with Operation Wallacea in Indonesia.
This summer, I spent six weeks as a Habitat Surveyor for Operation Wallacea (Opwall) in Indonesia, and this is a bit about my experience. Opwall are a company who conduct conservation research across the world, funded by volunteers (usually students) who pay to join the surveys for a period of time. My job was to lead groups of volunteers in the field to collect data on habitat.
Opwall's Indonesia site is on Buton, a small island off the south-east coast of Sulawesi. This area is particularly valuable for biodiversity because it is along the Wallace line, one of the few places in the world where marsupials from Australia and primates from Asia are found on the same island. As Buton has relatively high forest cover, it is also a population stronghold for a number of threatened species, such as the lowland anoa (wild cattle), Sulawesi wild pig, the local subspecies of the booted macaque, and the knobbed and dwarf hornbills.
Surveys
The forest on Buton is threatened by deforestation for logging, agriculture and mineral extraction. Therefore, Opwall are collecting data on carbon storage of trees to apply for money from the RED++ scheme for protecting the forest. This is where Habitat Surveyors come in, as carbon storage is calculated based on measurements of the circumference at breast height of the trees. Other variables recorded by volunteers and I included tree species name, canopy cover, understorey density, slope angle, and numbers of saplings and seedlings.
Habitat data was measured across 50 x 50 metre plots, which are placed in the same location every year to monitor long-term changes in the forest. At the start of each survey, the guides and I would navigate to the right co-ordinates and set out along the perimeter following compass bearings. The students would then help set out ropes to subdivide the square into 10 by 10 metre sections to take measurements in. This may sound easy enough, but you can’t see another person across 50 m of rainforest, so pairs of volunteers had to stand at opposite ends of the square and shout out at the top of their lungs to vocally guide the person with the rope through to the right point on the other side. As they walked across, they had to fight paths through rattan (a very thorny, common plant), sharp rocks and whatever else might be in the way, so surveys were challenging. Nevertheless, almost everyone really enjoyed them as it was such a hands-on experience.
A number of other surveys are also carried out at the Opwall site: birds, megafauna (large animals), bats, butterflies, and herpetofauna (reptiles and amphibians, both in the day and at night). I helped out on all of these, so I can give a quick overview of each one.
Bird surveys start at dawn, when birds are most active. Groups head out onto the trail when it is still a little dark and do point counts every 2-300 m, where they stop for 10 minutes and record all bird species seen and heard. My highlights were hearing the bay coucals, which make a haunting, ghost-like sound, particularly when many are calling at once.
Megafauna surveys look for the large animals. As it’s difficult to see them in the rainforest, this generally means looking for tracks on the ground. We found wild pig tracks most commonly. Their population is thriving because local people are mostly Muslim (and don’t eat pork), so they don’t face the hunting pressure that other animals such as the anoa do! Macaques tend to stay in the trees, but sometimes they’d leave tracks when they came down to the ground that looked like tiny handprints. We also saw some civet prints, which were like little cat paws. The megafauna you were most likely to see were hornbills, which are loud and large enough to be spotted in the tree canopy.
On butterfly surveys, we took nets along transects and caught the butterflies we saw. Handling them very gently by the thorax, we would then ID the species. Sometimes we caught moths instead, but there was sadly no ID book for those.
Herpetofauna surveys in the daytime involved following the transect lines and checking the pitfall traps (buckets in the ground next to a tarpaulin that animals fall into). In the evening, we put wet shoes on and took head torches to wander up the river next to camp, looking for anything from frogs to snakes to box terrapins. We spotted animals by their eye shine, which is when the light of the torch bounces off their eyes and they look like marbles. We also saw many spiders and tarantulas, and even a bird-eating spider in the process of eating a black-naped oriole!
Bat surveys also happened in the evening. Mist nets and harp traps were set up by staff and guides just before dusk, and then volunteers were brought along to see which bats fly into them. The survey leader handled them with gloves and took measurements of different bones and body parts to use to identify the species. The most striking differences were between insectivorous and fruit bats – insectivorous bats are generally smaller (but not always), with elaborate facial features to aid echolocation, whereas fruit bats are usually larger and often have dog or fox-type faces.
Camp Life
I spent a few weeks in each of two camps while I was there, North and South Camp, and noticed a lot of differences between them.
North Camp was a 6 hour drive from the village we stayed in for training week, Labundo. I think I may have been the only person who enjoyed that journey down the bumpy roads scarred with potholes, but it was impossible to get bored when there were so many pretty villages and so much interesting scenery to look at out of the car windows! We rode on the back of a trailer to get to the forest entrance. This was incredibly fun at first but slightly draining 45 minutes later when you started to feel the bruises from the bumpy roads!
The walk into camp was 45 minutes over flat ground. We changed into wet shoes halfway to cross seven shallow rivers and the camp was situated by the last of these. Accommodation was fold-out canvas beds in army-style tents. At night, we could hear tarsiers chirping as they chased each other in the trees.
My favourite moment was the night we saw a civet stealing scraps out of the food bin. We knew he was a regular visitor, so a small group of us put a bit of extra tofu into the bin and waited there with cameras. He came back a couple of times, completely not bothered by our presence. He walked around near the table, went under the bench we were sat on, and eventually got so close to us that he sniffed my toe – I felt his wet nose on my skin! At that point I moved my foot a little, concerned he thought it was tofu and was going to bite it, and he ran away.
South Camp, by contrast, is not allowed to have permanent buildings because it’s in a protected forest, so everything is in tents. We rode in the back of a cattle van to get to the start of the trek to camp, a 2-3 hour slightly steep walk with stairs for part of the way. The camp is in a very old bit of riverine forest, with tents around an open clearing with huge trees and a river, often shrouded by mist in the morning. We slept in hammocks. The first time I got into mine was the first time I had ever even sat on a hammock, and I did it in the pitch black with just my head torch on. It was like entering a rocking black cocoon. I tried to find the sides and cling on, but I couldn’t distinguish stable canvas and unsecured mosquito net. The whole thing wouldn’t stop moving and I was genuinely scared I was going to fall out – someone had already broken their ankle doing that this season!
In terms of wildlife around camp, highlights include the red-winged dragonflies (Neurothemis species) that were almost always darting around on the river, and the time we saw a flying draco lizard with his “wings” spread out on the tree. Evening herpetofauna surveys were also amazing there – the river was full of adorable Rhacophorus tree frogs, which were bright green and happy to sit on your hands (or face) for as long as you wanted.
The transects we surveyed also differed widely between North and South camp – they were a lot tougher in the North! All the main ones started at the top of a 200 m elevation slope which the students did struggle with sometimes. It usually took an hour to climb. Even the easier transects involved a lot of river crossings, which meant carrying wet shoes as well as hiking boots.
In comparison, everything around South Camp was flat, and the one trail which was a little slippery was deemed too difficult to take students down! I visited it with other staff members though, and there was a beautiful area at the end with fig tree roots spilling over the sides of tall rocks and a bat cave. Trails at both camps were extremely muddy, even at the start of the season. I suppose it’s a result of them getting churned up every year.
While they were tougher, I actually enjoyed the North Camp transects a little more, because they felt more of a challenge.
Weather
It’s dry season on Buton in July-August, but it can still rain heavily. When this happens, lots of surveys are cancelled (because birds don’t sing, butterflies don’t fly and mammal tracks get washed away), but habitat surveys continue. Usually, that’s no problem. One day, however, it rained so heavily and consistently that it was like standing under a shower. I crossed a small, newly formed river to take a GPS reading at a corner of the habitat plot. By the time the device had taken an average location (7 minutes), I could no longer find a way back across the river where the water was lower than the top of my wellies. Furthermore, on the way back, a knee deep river had formed on what was a dry pathway when we crossed it that morning!
Most of the time, however, we were lucky and it didn’t rain for most of the week.
Labundo
As I briefly mentioned, we spent a training week before the survey season in the village of Labundo. At South Camp, we returned there for 3 nights every week and conducted some surveys at the village edge. It was here that we saw a lot of the wildlife, partly because it is easier to see animals through vegetation that is less dense. Bear cuscus were found frequently there. We also walked to a large fruiting fig tree to find hornbills, and the herpetofauna group saw a 6 foot python in the river. Staying in the village, while a hundred times hotter than the rainforest, was also nice because we could properly wash our clothes, and go to the shops to buy Indonesian food. One of the shops near the food hall opened at around 5:30 in the morning to sell freshly baked goods for the equivalent of 5 pence (in British pounds) each, which almost seemed like a crime!
Summary
Opwall survey the same sites in Buton every year, both for animals and habitat, which allows the build-up of long-term data-sets to show changes in flora or fauna over time and what might have caused that. A number of publications have been produced from this work. Their presence in the area and the employment of local people as guides and operations staff is also very important to protecting the forest as it provides a viable economic alternative to forest clearance. It was fantastic to be involved in this and I would recommend it to anyone else interested in conservation work.
Thank you for reading.
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