Explore Borneo : 'First Foot Print on Tropical Rainforest of Borneo'

I never made a list of the place that I must visit. If there was opportunity to had experience in some kind of place that I never been there before, just go and experience it. But since I was in undergraduate school, I have little obsession to visit all kind of forest.  My scientific reason is how do you wish to protect forest if you never have experience with them? (give me applause).  And my silly reason is I don’t need to worry about my appearance when I am in the jungle.

One of my obsessions is going to the famous tropical rainforest of Borneo. On March 2011, I got opportunity to visit that admirable forest as a consultant of HCVF (High Conservation Value Forest) project. HCVF is a part of certified procedures for timber production forest as an assessment of their forest management (for more information about HCVF, you can read HCVF Toolkit for free in internet). That was my first time did that kind of project and also my first time explored production forest so I was blind toward field condition.

I started my journey early in the morning because my flight at 6 A.M. Honestly, I hate early morning trip because I never have enough sleep at night so that I will be sleepy all day. There were five persons in the team and I was the only woman there but didn’t matter for me. Our destination was Tarakan Island, the crowded island in the northern part of East Kalimantan Province. The office and timber factory of timber production forest enterprise that we went to visit take place in there. We stayed on their guesthouse for one night and then we continued our trip to their concession at Bulungan regency on the next day. That was an incident that made me shock at the guesthouse. When I opened the backdoor of that guesthouse, I was welcome by two big Malayan honey bear! Of course they didn’t attack me because they were on small caves (poor bears :( ).

Anyway, the trip to their concession might be held by sea and river trip. If you have read my post “Row Row Your Boat”, you already known that I cannot swim. But, I didn’t feel scared because their speedboat looked better than the speedboat at my trip on Siberut Island although our speedboat was overload (12 adult people and luggage). Along the river, I saw many signs of concession activity like open area for logpond, ex-logging area, and heavy equipment to carry timbers. After 3 hours on speedboat, we finally arrived at their basecamp but to reach their concession we must ride 4WD for 1.5 hour. Sometimes being the only female in the group is advantageous like you can get your own bedroom, you don’t need to bring heavy luggage by your selves, and you don’t need to squeeze on the back seat in the car.

My job was doing groundcheck, an observation toward actual condition and marking sample point for every land cover. That day was drizzling since morning, poor condition to do field activity because it difficult to receive signal from GPS satellite, the picture for documentation may become not perfect (especially if your camera isn’t good enough), and the accessibility may become difficult too. I knew that concession road would be hilly but I didn’t suppose that road would be twisted too. If you aren’t familiar with this type of road, high possibility that you want to vomit like I did. In the beginning I was busy to hold back myself to vomit (it not cool if I vomit at that time)

 but after we passed the road at higher elevation suddenly I was impressed with the panorama at that time. As far as I could saw was tropical rain forest that stretched from lowland to top of the hill plus the canopies that was covered by fog, so fantastic. 

We stopped at several places to observe the forest condition. When we went to riparian area to see their called ‘HCV area’, we had to leave the main road and passed through the secondary road that had worse condition. On our way back from the riparian, the rain already stopped and made the ground so muddy and flabby. Then the right front wheel trapped into the mud and became worse and worse after the driver forced the car to move forward. After all of us gave up releasing that wheel, we decided to call someone to help. The driver walked alone to the nearest camp (no hp signal there), 2 kilometers far from our location, and came back with his friend that drove small truck. The funny thing was after released our car from the mud, the truck also trapped at hole in the road (1:1).

Our final destination was production camp at KM-82 (82 kilometer from the entrance) in the hill area. The place was in annual work plan 2010 and included in limited production forest area. That mean, the forest at that place have higher density than other place that we passed before. When we arrived, all of the workers were playing soccer. There were no logging activities at that day due to bad weather condition. 

I found cultural gap at that camp between dayak and the comer workers. Although their management already built proper wooden house for them but the dayak never use that. They prefer to live at the side of river and built their sober tent roof house included the comer worker that married with dayak woman. The camp foreman told us that their reason rejected the house because they don’t want to disturb other worker at night when they want to drunk. I just found out long after that from our social culture report that dayak sub-tribe which live there are brusu and punan tribe. The dayak (at that place) always live as a nomad at the side of river and their main transportation is boat. The other cultural gap (still according to the camp foreman) is when they receive their wage. Dayak worker usually use their wage to hold a drinking party and not familiar to do saving. The unfortunate thing was their children didn’t go to school.   

The camp foreman held us until their dinner time so that it was dusk when we leaved the production camp. Again, we faced another obstacle on our way home. The only bridge in KM-40 fell down and the last piece of it was 1 meter vulnerable middle part of the bridge.  At that condition, communication tool is important but we have neither radio nor phone signal.  Fortunately, at the way from KM-82, we were passed by the logistic car for production camp. That car driver told us about the bridge condition so that we asked him to contact the basecamp when he arrived at KM-82. While we waited for other car to pick us, we tried to figure out how to pass the bridge. Might we down to the river in the darkness or tried to cross the last piece of the bridge? Our guardian (or drunken) angel was old man from dayak punan settlement across the river. That old man successfully convinced us to cross that last piece of bridge after demonstrated how tough that bridge by crossing that bridge alone. The silly thing was we, 6 six sensible people, followed one drunken old man crossing the vulnerable bridge at the same time. But the silliest was when his drunken wife and his little son came (they were in the middle of drinking party). That old man guided his wife to cross the bridge by holding her hand while his little son followed them without guardian in the darkness and both of his parents didn’t worry at all. Looking at that event my project leader suddenly made a joke, he said,” That’s called living together with nature”.   

From that trip, I have opinion that is no matter what kind of management they are as long as the forest still being forest is better than other option. Both of natural biodiversity and local peoples rely on forest to life. So the conclusion is saving our forest is a must. :D