Semut

Although the number of entries I have written since I started this (2) may indicate otherwise, I have been thinking of my little blog audience a lot. Unfortunately for me a couple of you actually seemed keen to read more! I thought that maybe my writing was not as awful as I had imagined, perhaps it had even verged on readable. This realisation lead to a fear that whatever I wrote next would fail to meet the success of the previous two efforts. Obviously the best tactic was not to write anything.
However, as the only person who seemed to notice that I hadn't written anything else was my Dad, I realised I had not made as great an impression as I had feared. So here you go Dad, some more blogging in honour of your birthday. This could be a good point to say "April Fool" and write nothing more but sadly I am a few days late.

Right. Enough rambling and down to what I was going to write about. Life in Damai, the estate that I live on in the REA Kaltim Oil Palm Plantation. In case any of you are curious, the title of this post means 'ant'. I'm always struggling thinking of names for things so am grateful that at the moment I had my cursor over the title box an ant marched across the screen. Now, while I like watching ants sifting around on the forest floor and doing shuttle runs between lumps of food and their nests, I hate them when they are crawling around on my desk top and appearing from under the keys on my computer. I'll be quite happy for them to build a nest in there in a month or so, so that I can claim insurance on said computer. I even bought my crappy old one with a key missing to make the job easier for them. Actually I lie, there are two keys missing. I wanted to maintain some aura of affluence by making it sound like I had removed one key on purpose, or indeed that I have two computers. Unfortunately that's not the case. I am just cheap. Sorry, enough about ants. They are making it hard to stop mentioning them though. I just murdered a winged albino one that tried to crawl up my shorts.

Until May the 15th I will be living on an Oil Palm Plantation in East Kalimantan. If you want to look where that is the co-ordinates are as follows: N 0 deg 14'  57.8", E 116 deg 18' 24.6". The nearest city, Samarinda, is about 8 hours away, four of which entail a boat trip up the Mahakam and then Belayan rivers. Pretty isolated. The plantation itself is huge, though one of the smaller ones in Kalimantan I am told, and around 2,000 people live on my estate alone. I lose track but I think there are a total of around seven estates that make up the REA plantation with my estate, Damai, being the smallest.

For the two months that I am here I will be working with the REA KON team, the Conservation group. They are in charge of maintaining the conservation reserves in the plantation and  are continually fighting with the Planters to get more areas conserved and to stop the Planters cutting down ones that are already theoretically protected. The team is made up of 13 people, including myself. Kiki (Monica) is the Manager and her deputy is Yusuf, who focuses on work with the local villages. Deni focuses primarily on Biodiveristy, while Ingan is doing work on Oil Palm Ecology. They are assisted by Daud, Kahang, Jacksen, Yakob and Lambert. Then there is Rama, the office assistant. She has trouble seeing over the tops of the partitions in the office and would fit comfortably under my armpit. Finally, Rob. Rob is the Technical Advisor and it is through him that I got this Internship. Luckily for me that means I get to stay at Rob's house which is mercifully air conditioned.

For the past two weeks I have been working primarily with Deni in the field. This has entailed five days of mist-netting in one of the reserves. I was pretty darn excited on the first day, but come day two this excitement had worn off a little. Mist netting here entails setting up fine nets at 50m intervals in the reserve and then checking these every 45 minutes. Unfortunately that means sitting around for 45 minutes in the heat. To give you an idea of how hot/humid it is imagine drinking at least 5 litres of water in 6 hours and still feeling dehydrated. I look pretty darn attractive in these temperatures as I am sure you can imagine.  Ladies of New Zealand I apologise as the men here probably think that we as a nation are perpetually sweaty and red. Anyway, occassionally catching some beautiful birds does make up for it a bit. I won't get into the mist netting in much detail but suffice to say I think New Zealand scientists tend to worry a little more about test subject welfare. These guys leave the birds sitting in the sunlight, in bags, sh***ing themselves, while they smoke. Charming. I'm probably being a bit precious but I don't really care.

I next headed up to Maura Ancalong, a wetland area about three hours drive away, to tag some crocodiles and turtles. Pretty exciting for someone who has never seen either in the wild! The crocodiles were just babys and only about 70cm or so long but still fantastic. They even kindly displayed their sharp teeth for me by biting Rob. Ouch.

After embracing my inner Steve Irwin I spent a couple of days helping Deni out with setting up camera traps in another of the reserves. These camera traps are movement sensitive and are left out for a month, with photos being downloaded from them every 15 days. The most recent set included pictures of two Orangutan, some Mouse Deer, Fire Backed Pheasants, a Long tailed Macaque and a Leopard. Pretty darn exciting to be honest, particularly as somehow these species are managing to survive in patches or secondary forests surrounded by oil palm plantations. It will be interesting to see what happens to the populations in the long term, provided the reserves remain and there is indeed a 'long term'.

So, that is what I have been up to for the past week or so. If any of you out there want to know more about how the monitoring is being conducted or anything else like that just drop me a line.

As for what the remainder of my time here holds, I'm not entirely sure. I am trying to nut out a short project I could do while here, but am also thinking of potential Masters or PhD projects. Whatever I do, I want it to be of some use. At the moment that is looking like examining what ecosystem services reserve areas may contribute to oil palm plantations, and what the economic value of these reserves may be. Simple really. Unfortunately this will mean delving into the economic side of things, a realm I have tried to avoid my whole life. Dad, being an economist I can only imagine how proud, or horrified, you are at this moment.

So, while trying to think of how to save the world, I will also be jetting off to Jakarta with the team for a week or so to visit the University and attend a few meetings. I'll also be spending another week at least up at Maura Ancalong looking for Storm Stork and Tomistoma (false gharials, like crocodiles) with an American resercher who is coming over. Luckily for both you and I, there is no internet access up there so I can avoid any feelings of guilt for not updating this blog. Hurrah!

And that, my pretties, is enough from me. Toodle pip!

P.S I have spent the last two weeks despondent as I have seen no live snakes. Today one slithered across my feet in the kitchen. Rob kindly grabbed it and, after spending a few minutes trying to get it to bite him to prove it was harmless, gave it to me to hold. It was quite nice and smooth actually, though it did spray its musk all over me which was pleasant.