Upriver and a yellow throated marten

Emma's blog 4: Following 3 successful areas of lowland dipterocarp forest being sampled, it was time to travel further up river to a new area.

We hired a local "speedboat" to take us there. As there had been little rain over the past week some parts were very shallow, so a lot of stopping and pushing was needed, but we finally made it.

For the following four days, gibbons, siamangs and orangutans were heard within the area on our vocal arrays, as well as trumpeting wild elephants!

Data collection continued including 5 randomly placed 25m x 25m vegetation plots. All trees over 30cm circumference were recorded: circumference, height, canopy spread and number of branches to ascertain an overall structural perspective of the forest.

In addition and just for fun we placed camera traps within the area to see what other wildlife we could record within the area.

Ben, an experienced SOCP employer, with over 8 years’ experience within the forest helped us position the traps. They were placed on established mammal paths within the forest to increase our success rate and left out for 3 nights.

At the end of 4 days, the camera traps were collected and…success!!!

Ben and Emma place a camera trap