In the Bosom of BIZARRE BORNEO

By Ghazally Ismail

BIZARRE BORNEO
Discover the untamed paradise, Borneo. For those planning to embark on an exhilarating journey through the lush rainforests of Borneo, dive into the captivating pages of this latest book “ In the Bosom of BIZARRE BORNEO” – the definitive guide to the extraordinary plant and animal species that call this enchanting island home. Before immersing yourself in a rich tapestry of biodiversity, unlock the secrets of Borneo’s magical realm. The book offers vivid descriptions and stunning drawings of highly endangered mammals, the immense diversity of birds, snakes, frogs, insects and a host of rare plants such as the world’s biggest flower, Rafflesia, and the carnivorous Nepenthes plants of Mount Kinabalu. This must-read book unveils the wonders that await, urging scientists, nature enthusiasts, explorers, and wildlife aficionados to embark on a journey of a lifetime. A retired immunologist, Ghazally Ismail, turns his writing and drawing skills to sharing his four-decades of exploring the rainforests of Borneo, leaving you awe-struck and yearning for an unforgettable adventure in the heart of this ecological paradise. He introduces you to an array of breathtaking species, weaving together a narrative that highlights the delicate balance of Borneo's ecosystem. Prepare to be amazed and inspired as BIZARRE BORNEO opens up your gateway to an extraordinary journey. Unleash the explorer within and let this book be your compass as you marvel at the wonders of Borneo, a destination that promises to awaken your senses and ignite your passion for nature.
The book will leave an indelible mark on your soul urging you to conserve and protect biodiversity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781669880806

Ghazally Ismail

Ghazally Ismail grew up in a small Malaysian village, Jelawat. Selected to attend a premier boarding school, the Malay College Kuala Kangsar, 400 km away from home, he missed his childhood environment amidst lush pristine rainforests, mangroves and sandy beaches. He earned his doctorate from the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, USA in Immunology and Microbiology in 1976. For more than forty years, he spent his working life in Sabah and Sarawak on the island of Borneo. As a professor, his research and teaching took him to exploring numerous rainforests and coral reefs of immense biodiversity. He published extensively not only in immunology and microbiology but also environmental issues pertaining to biodiversity and conservation. After retiring from the academia, he delved into creative activities including writing, drawing, photography and film documentaries. His previous books include The Malaysian Rainforest Realms: Fascinating Facts in Q&A (Marshal Cavendish 2010), Nature’s Pearls of Wisdom ( UKM Publisher 2013), Monkey Moments (Xlibris Publication 2021). He was the executive producer of nature film documentaries “The Guardian of Kinabalu” and “ The Giant’s Guardian” about the world biggest flower Rafflesia.

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Copyright © 2023 by Ghazally Ismail.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/10/2023

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Alluring Borneo

Chapter 2 Biodiversity Bliss

Chapter 3 Botanizing Bountiful Kinabalu

Chapter 4 Birding In Borneo

Chapter 5 Spineless Survival

Chapter 6 Big Body Boon or Bane?

Chapter 7 Night Prowlers and Rovers

Chapter 8 Leapers and Loafers

Chapter 9 Slithering Serpents

Chapter 10 Flying Without Wings

Chapter 11 Gifts of Darkness

Chapter 12 River of Life

Chapter 13 Island in the Sun

Chapter 14 Only Earth We Have

Preface

Retirement can leave one feeling adrift after a lifelong academic career. The burning desire to continue educating and shaping the world lingers. Having dedicated over four decades to academia and research in Borneo, my work became an integral part of my identity. Upon retirement, feelings about the loss of purpose is overwhelming, but I refuse to disconnect from academia. The world still grapples with over-arching environmental issues, including global warming, climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss. In Borneo, I bear witness to plant and animal species on the cusp of extinction. In this book, I share my forty years of rainforest exploration to raise awareness about Bornean biodiversity and its significance. Through writing my personal experiences and illustrating with my own drawings, I aim to engage readers and convey the urgent need for the protection of rainforest species.

I dedicate this work to my grandchildren ALYSSA. NATHANIEL, JASSIN, BAXTER and CASPAR. May their education, awareness and conviction provide us with an assurance that the future of all species on planet Earth is in good hands.

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ALLURING BORNEO

Admittedly, there was a slight trepidation within me when I was told of my transfer to Borneo. What if Lesley and my two young daughters simply couldn’t adjust to our new surroundings? At the time, we were already establishing our respective comfort zones living in a new terrace house in Subang Jaya, Selangor in Peninsular Malaysia. Our relocation to Borneo would demand quite a sacrifice and less than radical adjustment on everyone’s part. Our mindset must be right. Rightly worrying and uncertainties galore. What if I failed to embrace my new role in starting a new university campus in Sabah? What if my young family found living in Sabah unsettling? I would be forced to move back to the main campus after my contract of two years. The thought of having to kowtow to my old bosses and do my job as dictated by them, didn’t help. I was most reluctant to move. I was dragging my feet as best I could in accepting the offer. I hesitated in taking the plunge into my new role of building a branch campus from scratch. A role I was never trained to perform anyway. Research was my competency, not academic administration.

My preconceived idea of Borneo didn’t help either. Borneo had this mystical blend of romanticism and raw wilderness attached to its fascinating land mass. To anyone growing up in developed temperate countries, Borneo conjured up a place somewhere very remote in the tropics crawling with venomous snakes, stinging insects and monkeys swinging from tree to tree amidst thick lush green jungles. Mostly covered by thick impenetrable tropical rainforests, the western world often associated Borneo with the last frontier - the remotest part of the globe. Driving to work in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, one morning, I was amused hearing a commercial advertisement from the telecommunication giant, AT&T on the radio. The company saw it fit to feature a conversation between two old friends who hadn’t heard from one another for a while:

Voice 1: Hello, this is Margaret speaking.

Voice 2: Hello Margaret, Nancy here.

Voice 1: Well hello Nancy, nice to hear from you. Where have you been? Bill and I thought you’ve moved to Borneo.

That reference to Borneo stretched a smile on my face. One couldn’t be more condescending. Indeed to many Americans, Borneo would be the last place on the globe to be communicable. Despite knowing that wasn’t true, I didn’t come back to Malaysia with the expectation to end up working in Borneo. It would be the last place for me to think of building a career and raising my children. My wife Lesley grew up in New Zealand. I was wondering if she, too, like the American lady on that radio commercial, would have a similar notion about Borneo. The final decision whether I should accept the new position weighed heavy on me.

The challenges ahead seemed insurmountable. The only consolation was a surreal optimism that was repeatedly drumming into my head, Go on, go for it. Why not? You’ve got the opportunity to chart a new path in your career. You’re still young and you’re capable of anything. I was then only three decades old and quite game at charting a new experience in my own country having lived overseas almost ten years before that. A decision had to be made. In 1981 I agreed to be transferred to Sabah, Borneo, tasked with starting a branch campus of the National University of Malaysia or Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The campus was to be in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. I eventually accepted the offer to become Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Sabah Campus (UKMS).

Not in my wildest dream had I ever expected to end up in Borneo. But I did. Spending more than half my lifetime building a career in this part of the world was not in my plan growing up. It was never on my radar. Borneo conjured up mixed images to many disciplines. To geologists, the formation of Borneo island itself fascinated them. During the glacial periods when water levels were lower, Borneo was linked with other parts of the continental shelf including the Malay Peninsula. Both were part and parcel of the large landmass known as Sundaland. At the end of the Ice Age, the waters rose again as the glaciers melted. Much of the connecting landmass was inundated resulting in the formation of new islands surrounded by seas. One of the exposed landmass became Borneo with the tallest Mount Kinabalu as part of it. To geographers and historians, the coasts of this third largest island in the world used to be lined with trading seaports. In the 7th century, the coastlines were linked with lucrative maritime Silk Roads feeding crucial ports and trade posts. To anthropologists, Borneo was home of savage head-hunting tribes that roamed its forests and mountains. The seas around Borneo were rife with plundering pirates. To European explorers, Borneo’s rainforests teemed with weird plants and animals unknown to science awaiting discovery. Borneo was indeed a mammoth landmass filled with intriguing people existing in harmony with nature in ways alien to the outside world.

For most of the last millennium, Borneo remained isolated from the rest of the world. Located further from the Indian trade routes in relation to other parts of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo was less of a go-to destination for traders and immigrants. But in the 16th century, emissaries of Spain and Portugal reached Borneo’s shores. Soon after, the Dutch and British arrived. These two latter power nations made their presence felt by establishing territorial rights and colonies that held dominance in Borneo from the 17th century into the modern era. Only in 1949 did Indonesia become a foreign state, and in 1957, Malaysia gained its independence. Today Borneo comprises - Kalimantan of Indonesia; Sabah and Sarawak of Malaysia; and the Sultanate of Brunei.

The mere possibility of having to uproot my family in Kuala Lumpur and relocate ourselves in Borneo spurred me to find out more about Borneo’s past. I found myself reading about the history and culture of the people of Borneo. Today, the population of Borneo consists of indigenous people of different ethnicities and cultures. Rightly or wrongly, almost all my understanding of this landmass were from the literature and documentations as perceived by European explorers of the past era. In the 19th century, a number of European explorers came to Borneo to seek fame and fortune. A few among them never returned, only to suffer horrific deaths here. A Scottish trader Robert Burns was the first European to visit the Kayan territory in Borneo. He set foot in Bintulu around 1847 before making his way up the Rajang and Baram rivers to mingle with the Kayan tribes. On a trade mission to Kinabatangan river aboard the British registered schooner Dolphin, he was attacked by a group of pirates disguised as traders. Burns died a horrific death. His head was severed from his shoulder in one blow.

There was more savagery and notoriety. In 1849 Banjarmasin, the south-eastern part of Indonesian Borneo, yet another explorer suffered a terrible loss of life. James Motley was working for the Eastern Archipelago company prospecting for coal. He, his wife, two daughters and son all met with horrific deaths. They were among the 100 Europeans killed during the Banjarmasin War - a power struggle between Sultan Hidayatullah II of Banjar and the illegitimate grandson of the former Sultan Tamjied Illah. During the war, all Europeans, including the missionaries, were mercilessly killed by the rebels for no apparent reasons.

However, even for the time, violent deaths were deemed isolated incidents. They failed to stop European explorers from gravitating to Borneo in search of new frontiers and fortunes. An English geologist, Frank Hatton was the first white man who befriended and got to know the Dusun tribes living in the interior regions of Sabah, really well. He was exploring for minerals for the British North Borneo Company in 1883 when he died. His demise was caused by an accidental shooting from his own gun. It is believed that his Winchester rifle got tangled in jungle vine creepers, went off and shot him in the chest. Another explorer Franz Witti was working for the British North Borneo Company in 1877 surveying the natural resources in the region, when he discovered oil just outside Kudat town in Sabah. He too died a horrific death. But it wasn’t what it seemed. In his last expedition of 1882 travelling between Limbawang and Keningau, Mitti was warned not to proceed because of an ongoing tribal feud between two different Murut groups. He ignored the warning and ended up getting ambushed by hundreds of headhunters from the Murut Peluan group. The killing turned out to be a mistake. The Murut Peluan attacked Witti and his party thinking they were friendly with the warring Murut Nabai group. That was not true but a misrepresentation. Sadly, Witti’s team was savagely slayed by spears and blowpipes.

Borneo comprised of a variety of different native tribes, each distinguishable from others by distinct language and culture. The Iban were the largest indigenous group in Borneo. Before contact was made with the West, Borneo’s tribes often engaged in wars with one another. The many warring tribes were notoriously famous for headhunting. Victorian Britain called this savage land ‘Barbaric Borneo.’ Warriors would go hunting for their enemies’ heads bringing them home as trophies. They were mandatory proof of victories. The skulls of enemies’ heads were also brought back to the longhouses for gifts to their would-be brides. Headhunting in expansion or defence of their territory was a show of tribal dominance. Returning to the longhouse with a head in one hand and a long spear in the other was a sign of masculinity and courage. The more of such grotesque sights, the more fearsome and prestigious the community would be in the eyes of other tribes. It was in their tribal belief that the head gave them possession of the spirit which in turn made the collector more powerful. To mark their triumph and coming of age as warriors, wobbly lines were tattooed on the back of hands to indicate they had killed and severed a head or two. A heads-up not to be taken lightly.

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Indigenous people of Borneo

The headhunting tribes of Borneo included the Iban, Murut and Kadazan-Dusun. The Murut tribes were most feared. They were said to be more brutal and ruthless. A young man was expected to collect at least two heads to be respected by the community and considered having come of age. Failing that he would receive no due recognition from the elders and their siblings. Before marriage, men were expected to sever and obtain at least one head. To avoid being ostracised from their community, young Murut men would embark on regular headhunting raids to murder and sever the head of anyone they came across. Nobody was spared. Men, women and children were massacred wantonly. All that mattered to these youths with raging testosterone was their rite of passage into manhood and marriage.

I was once invited to an Iban wedding at a longhouse. An assortment of human and orangutan skulls still hung at prominent sections of the traditional residence in full display of ancestral pride. Skulls feature significantly in the ritualistic and cultural ceremonies of the present day Bornean tribes. During the reign of Sir James Brooke in the 1800s, headhunting was banned. That effectively stifled the practice. But the savage ancient tradition was revived during the Japanese occupation in World War II as a means of defending themselves from the Japanese invasion. As to how useful that revisit to headhunting was, couldn’t be ascertained. But headhunting was said to have petrified the Indonesian soldiers in the days of confrontation when Sabah and Sarawak gained independence through the formation of Malaysia in the 1960s.

Yet as I first set foot in Sabah, the past reputation of Borneo seemed to have definitely gone for good. I saw not an inkling of similarities to even suggest the people of modern Borneo had retained the warring traditions of their ancestors. The majority dwelled in modern houses in urban settings. They essentially loved and ate similar food as everyone else in the country. Their lifestyles too involved engaging in activities and pleasures of life like everyone else. Most fascinating to me though, they seemed to adhere strongly to their respective religious beliefs, traditional rites and cultures.

What could have driven these once headhunting tribes to embrace modern living as people in other parts of the globe? I began to assume the transition could have been the spread of religion. The indigenous tribes of Borneo, as in other cases of rainforest tribes in other parts of the world, were primarily pagan once upon a time. For centuries, they believed in the existence of Nature Spirits. These were mythical beings with a direct tie to nature. They were pagan natives that form relationships between themselves and these invisible realms. Pagans live practicing a myriad of rituals, superstitions and traditions. The pagans of Borneo were a superstitious bunch too. They held animistic beliefs and saw all natural objects as having their own spirits. In Sabah, I was educated about some of the spiritual aspects of the Kadazan-Dusun animistic beliefs. The Bobohizan was a spirit medium that served a vital role in local pagan culture. It was a window into the spirit world. Through the Bobohizan, the believers would communicate and appease the many spirits by giving offerings and symbolic sacrifices of animals such as domestic chickens. I was very fortunate to have witnessed some of these elaborate rituals the Kadazan-Dusun people performed to appease their nature-centric spirits during my stay in Sabah. They marked important events by performing colourful ceremonies specific for each event.

In my second year in Sabah, I was invited to one of the most memorable events of the Kadazan-Dusun tribe by the Deputy Chief Minister of Sabah, James Ongkili. It was a celebration to appease the rice spirit called the Bambaazon. To ensure a successful harvest, an annual festival called the Kaamatan or the Rice Harvest Festival was celebrated throughout Sabah. Rice cultivation and their associated rituals were important to the Kadazan-Dusun culture. Each stage of rice cultivation was central in their life; from choosing the plot of land to harvesting the yield. Long elaborate chants and prayers were made before sacrifices and donations were given to the priestess spirit. This yearly event was celebrated with lots of home-brewed alcoholic drinks, ethnic music and iconic sumazau, a graceful form of cultural dance performed by men, women, boys and girls. There were cheers, joy and goodwill all round. That was an eye-opener for me on the rich diversity of people and culture in this wonderful Bornean Malaysian State, Sabah.

As in other parts of Borneo, time had slowly consumed paganism. Indigenous natives began to embrace new religions. Christianity came to Borneo after the establishment of the British North Borneo Company in 1882. Initially, the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches dominated the missionary movements. The Chinese and the ethnic tribes were targeted for conversion into different sects of Christianity from the Western world. However, around 1959, the various splinters of Christianity were found too confusing to be grasped by the many different natives of Borneo. They couldn’t quite comprehend the common ideology of these many branches of Christianity. A reorganization of the separate churches was undertaken to form a Borneo-centric Christian denomination called The Borneo Evangelical Church or SIB; Malay acronym for Sidang Injil Borneo. Several decades later in the early 20th century, more natives of different ethnicities converted from their pagan and animist ways to embrace this new SIB religion. Rural communities who once worshiped and made offerings to the Nature spirits switched to attending services in churches that quickly dotted the landscapes of Borneo. In the modern world, the rituals, superstitions and Bobohizan were quickly becoming a thing of the past. Sabah’s Harvest Festival and the deep cultural ties to Mount Kinabalu remained among the few reminders of paganism in Sabah. Embracing a new religion wasn’t the only reason for the waning of paganism. As more rural communities started to make a life for themselves in the big urban settings, ancient traditions and customs were slowly lost. As with much of the world, the last generation of pagans inescapably aged and succumbed to time. So did their belief system and traditions.

Brought up as a Muslim, I was naturally curious about the coming of Islam to Borneo. The dawn of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula started in the 7th century. Islam then started its expansion towards the eastern regions of the world. This was made possible through trade encouraged by the development of the maritime Silk Roads. The Silk Roads were among some of the most important routes through which relations between east and west were established. Diverse regions began to get exposed to different ideas and ways of life. Notably, widespread exchanges and diffusion of many of the world’s major religions occurred then. Muslims were purportedly excellent sailors. They monopolized the East-West trade of the maritime Silk Roads, connecting various major ports of eastern Asian regions together. Among the major ports they stopped at for water and food supplies were the coastal towns of northern Borneo. From here, Islam rapidly spread to Borneo in the 15th and 16th centuries when many coastal peoples were first converted. This was quickly followed by the inhabitants of the interior regions of the island embracing the new religion as more Muslim trader-cum-missionaries landed on their shores. The Idahan people of Lahad Datu, were the first to accept Islam. They were said to have embraced Islam as early as the 14th century. I personally have met many of the elderly Idahan people in Lahad Datu who could trace their ancestors back six or seven generations. A highly respected scholar of Islam was a man named Abdullah, believed to be the first of their ancestors who converted to Islam. He was famously known to be in possession of the only hand-written Quran that was brought to Borneo by the Arab traders. Well into the 20th century, Islam became one of the mainstream religions in Borneo.

Trade continued to flourish in Borneo into the 20th century. The edible bird’s nest, often dubbed as the Caviar of the East, had long been the most sought-after specialty item by Chinese in mainland China. Trading of bird’s nests started in China during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) after this bizarre foodstuff was brought back by seafaring Chinese sailors and introduced to the courts of China’s Emperor. The bird’s nest was hyped as a supreme delicacy fit only as Food of the Emperor. Trading of bird’s nests in Sabah flourished. It can be traced to the period before the 15th century. During that period, these highly priced nests were exchanged with valuable items from China including stone wares, porcelain, iron, brass, gold, glass beads and textiles. Here again the Idahan people were among the early traders in bird’s nests.

In the early days, not all explorers came to Borneo to trade or exploit the rich natural resources of Borneo. Some didn’t just contend with short exploratory work and return home. A few managed to rule over the native people through territorial arrangements made with local sultanates or regional warlords. Sir James Brooke was a British soldier and adventurer who became the Rajah of Sarawak. At the time he was in Borneo, the Iban, or Sea Dayak, was waging a rebellion against the Sultanate of Brunei who had nominal control over neighbouring Sarawak. As a former soldier, Brooke was skillful in military outmanoeuvring. He took it as his calling to help Brunei in crushing the rebellion. He succeeded in doing just that and earned the gratitude of the Sultan of Brunei. As a reward for his services, the title Rajah of Sarawak was conferred upon him in 1841. For the next 17 years, Brooke and a handful of English assistants made expeditions into the interior of Sarawak. Gradually he suppressed the prevalence of headhunting among the warring natives of Sarawak. Consequently, a more stable government was established. Returning to England in 1863, he left the government of Sarawak in the hands of a nephew who succeeded him. Sir James Brooke died in 1868 but his dynasty continued to rule Sarawak for a century between 1841-1946. Sir Vyner Brooke, the third and last white rajah, had intended to proclaim a constitution designed to establish self-government for Sarawak. However, shortly afterward the state fell to the Japanese. When World War II was over, Vyner Brooke decided to cede Sarawak to Great Britain. A bitter family feud that soon ensued formally terminated Brooke rule in 1946.

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Rajah Brooke

The allure and charm of Borneo were locked in its flora and fauna. Since the early days, it was the known and unknown species of plants and animals that had been the major magnets for adventurers to Borneo from all across Europe. They came to discover the weird and marvelous creatures inhabiting the pristine rainforests of Borneo. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to state that their enthusiasm in discovering the natural ecosystems with their bizarre inhabitants had in fact provided today’s modern world with the fundamental scientific explanations on how nature works. Among the most prominent was an Englishman named Alfred Wallace of modest family background. Although a land surveyor by training, Wallace was a naturalist at heart. He left England to collect biological specimens in South America to finance his passion. His quest was to understand the great laws that governed and shaped life on earth. But his trip back home was marred by fateful devastating weather resulting in his ship sinking. All his biological specimens were lost at sea and Wallace himself had a near-death experience. In order to make the money he had lost in the shipwreck back, he headed to the Malay Archipelago, a region to which few Europeans had ever ventured. He ended up spending most of his time exploring the rainforests of Singapore, Indonesia, Borneo and the Moluccas.

In 2005, I finally made the long-awaited visit to see Rajah Brooke’s cottage at the top of Bukit Peninjau, a hill in the middle of Sarawak’s once pristine rainforests. This was also where in 1855, Wallace wrote his hugely influential Sarawak Law paper. This was written after observing and pondering hard over the distribution of species that, in his curious mind, seemed related to one another. He noticed the natural distribution of species was unique. Each species seemed to occur in exclusive habitats and only to be shared by others of their kind. He surmised such exclusive distribution could only be established by means of gradual changes. An insight that eventually matured into a full-fledged Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, It was the same theory Charles Darwin arrived at independently years before, but had not yet published. It was during his adventures in the regions around Borneo that Wallace wrote a brilliant paper, which he sent to Charles Darwin. In it, he described how organisms produced more offspring than necessary. Then a process he termed as natural selection, would come into play to favour only the fittest survived. This led to the cliche survival of the fittest! The ideas Wallace arrived at on his own were revolutionary. He elaborated his original thoughts on evolutionary biology based on his succinct observations from his own adventures. He started to synthesize a new theory of evolution that resulted in the most insightful writing known as Wallace’s Ternate paper. In fact, Wallace laid the foundation for understanding the processes of evolution that closely mirrored what Darwin had been mulling over himself for some time.

Receiving Wallace’s paper and realizing that he might be scientifically scooped by this unknown naturalist in Borneo, Darwin quickly worked on his own writings. Three years later, in 1858, two papers were read before the Linnean Society of London. Their authors were Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. In another year, Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, directly positioning himself as the father of evolution. Whether Darwin or Wallace should be equally credited for the discovery of the mechanisms of evolution has stoked much controversy ever since. Comparatively little has been written about Wallace’s seminal work, published four years earlier. To me, Alfred Russel Wallace appeared as the forgotten founder of evolutionary theory.

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Alfred Russel Wallace

Another explorer who had contributed immensely to the natural history of Borneo was Sir Hugh Low. In the late 19th century, Low was known for his botanical work in Borneo. Born in 1824 to a horticulturist father, Low started to show interest in botany at an early age while working at his family’s nursery. At the young age of 20, his father sent him to Southeast Asia to collect plants. Low was based in Singapore first before he made friends with Sarawak’s first White Rajah, James Brooke, who invited him to Sarawak. Together they made several expeditions into the interior regions of Borneo, spending a total of about 30 months in Sarawak. All along, Low passionately documented the customs and traditions of Sarawak natives which fascinated him a lot. He became closely acquainted with the Sea Dayak, Land Dayak, Melanau and Kayan. Being a botanist, Low also documented in significant detail the significance of plants he collected during his adventures. His book was considered one of the first detailed accounts on Sarawak native people and their surroundings. He returned to Malaya and became a British administrator in the Malayan State of Perak. Later he again travelled to Borneo and was made Brooke’s colonial secretary in Labuan. During his stay in Labuan, Low spent time exploring parts of North Borneo, now Sabah. His notable exploration in the area was marked by his climb of Mount Kinabalu, the highest peak in Southeast Asia. Low made the first documented ascent of the mountain in March 1851. Although the highest point - Low’s Peak - was named after him, the truth was he never reached the highest point of the mountain at all. This was revealed from his own writing that described the peak as inaccessible to any but winged animals.

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Sir Hugh Low

Nonetheless, a non-winged English explorer did actually reach the highest peak of the mountain. John Whitehead, a naturalist and zoologist, made it to the top in 1888. Besides the highest peak of the mountain, Low’s Peak, the lowest point of the mountain, Low’s Gully, were both named after Sir Hugh Low. He was recorded as the first person to have looked down into the deep reaches of the gully in 1851. This was quite a feat because Low’s Gully is a 1,800m deep gorge on the north side of Mount Kinabalu. To this day, the gully is dubbed one of the least explored places on Earth. More than 100 years after Low looked down into the ravine, Low’s Gully made headlines across the world after a botched expedition. In March 1994, a British Army expedition of seven Britons and three inexperienced Hong Kong soldiers made a disastrous descent into the gully. Half of the party members were trapped for 16 days before being rescued. Four years later however, in 1998, a joint expedition by Malaysian and British teams made the first successful descent of Low’s Gully. Besides Low’s Peak and Gully, there were numerous species named after Sir Hugh Low. He also discovered Nepenthes lowii, a tropical pitcher plant endemic to Borneo during his ascent of Mount Kinabalu. Additionally, five species of orchids, a tree-shrew, a squirrel, a beetle and two butterflies were named after him. Low died on April 18, 1905 in Italy.

After a few days at the library, I learned a few more things about my next place of work. A lot of surprises but mostly pleasing and alluring. I was no longer intimidated by the past notoriety of Borneo but charmed instead. Nothing was going to stop me from signing the dotted line on my job contract. Despite the fact I was about to commit my young family of four to life in a less than familiar place for at least two years. I found it exciting trying to tell my seven-year old daughter Azizah that Borneo, after Greenland and Papua New Guinea, is the world’s third largest island. Australia is classified as an island continent. Still in kindergarten, she couldn’t really comprehend the geographical and political significance of the place she would be growing up next. I didn’t think it meant or mattered much to her that Borneo covered an area of roughly 287,000 square miles, and divided into four political regions: Kalimantan, Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei. I tried to impress upon my family that everyone should be looking forward to learning and enjoying Borneo’s natural history. Its rich and diverse flora and fauna definitely aced it all. One of world’s oldest rainforests vastly at our disposal for explorations. At an estimated 130 million years old, Borneo’s rainforests were twice as old as the Amazon rainforests in South America. Lesley, as all Kiwis, was always interested in the weather. I assured her rain would be more common in Sabah. No surprise why the forests in Borneo were called tropical rainforests. Many parts of Borneo received between 150 and 200 inches of rainfall annually. Between October and March, monsoons buffeted the island. Given the abundance of rainfall, it made sense that Borneo’s flora was among the most diverse in the world. More than 11,000 species of flowering plants, about a third of which were indigenous, found on this island alone. The density and diversity of this vegetation was most impressive. In one 16 acre area of Borneo’s lowland forest, over 700 species of trees had been recorded. In comparison, there were only 171 native tree species in all of eastern North America.

Borneo’s wildlife was equally impressive. Upon settling down in our new home, one of the first things we did was to take our two children, Azizah and Salina to see orangutans at Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, in Sandakan, on the east coast of Sabah. Borneo is one of the two places in the world where you can see orangutans in the wild. This lovable human-like creature is found only in Borneo and Sumatra. Over 100 of the animal species found on this island are endemic; meaning you can find the animal only in Borneo and nowhere else on the globe. Besides orangutans, examples of other endemic species include the Proboscis monkeys, Bornean clouded leopards and Sumatran rhinos. Unfortunately they are all in danger of being driven to extinction from loss of their natural habitats. More new species of plants and animals are being found on a daily basis by biologists exploring Borneo’s rainforests.

Borneo’s non-living features are equally amazing. The landscape is primarily mountainous, covered with lush green areas of pristine rainforest. This is however rapidly changing with rainforests being increasingly cleared in the last four decades. The highest peak in Southeast Asia, the magnificent Mount Kinabalu looms at 4,096 metres above sea level.

Sarawak is also home to some of the world’s biggest caves. The Sarawak Chamber in the Gunung Mulu National Park has the world’s largest cave chamber. The iconic Deer Cave here is the world’s largest cave passage. The cave has a silhouette of Abraham Lincoln at its entrance; a nature’s creation carved by the power of water gushing through the cave channel over millions of years. Several caves are home to millions of bats and swiftlets which further add to a sense of immense grandeur about the geological formation of Borneo.

If the number of species fails to impress you, how about the number of languages spoken here? Today, the latest estimate by socio-anthropologists put more than 170 ethnic languages spoken in Borneo. The island is home to hundreds of ethnic groups with distinct cultures and traditions. The Dayak people are the indigenous people that make up the bulk of the island’s population. An anthropologist would tell you that there exists more than 200 riverine and hill- dwelling ethnic tribes of Borneo. Dayak is often misconstrued as one of the native groups of Borneo. In actuality, Dayak is a loose term for a number of tribes found primarily living along the major rivers and forested areas in central and southern interior of Borneo. Each of these tribes has its distinct dialect, customs, laws, territory, and culture. They however do share common distinguishing traits that can be readily identifiable. Despite the gradual influence and social impacts of modernity, they still thrive happily in settlements along the rivers and at the fringes of the rainforests. Each proudly preserving their own identity, customs and tradition that have been passed on for generations. I have been to their traditional longhouses and stayed with them long enough to get wonderful insights into their unique way of life. Indeed, the manner these indigenous people respect the environment they live in and responsibly exploit the natural resources is a matter modern societies could learn for our sustainable future.

I looked forward to all these prospects of discovering and learning about the natural heritage of my own country Malaysia. Not every Malaysian would have this opportunity. In fact, after mulling over my decision of moving, Lesley and I felt rather keyed up and eager about raising our two impressionable daughters amidst the myriad charms of Borneo. Its natural beauty and friendly people definitely could be considered a huge bonus along with my job promotion as the Deputy Dean of a brand new Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, UKM Sabah Campus. We were decidedly converted. We were excited rather than filled with hesitancy. I couldn’t wait to experience and discover my new job environment. I threw myself into the bosom of Borneo

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BIODIVERSITY BLISS

The blessedness of nature is indeed beatitudes endowed upon us through the richness of biodiversity. We encounter biodiversity every day. It’s all the profusion of life forms on Earth - the vegetables and fruits at supermarkets, the fish, crabs, prawns and squids at the open air wet-market, the birds flying above, the menacing pests on our plants in the garden - are all but bits of biodiversity around us. What we see is only a tiny fraction of biodiversity. The dust and air around us contain millions of microorganisms. We carry these microbes, invisible to our naked eyes, on our skin and harbour them in our guts. Unknowingly, we provide them homes. A single tree can be home to many other living and dead plants. In our forests, a tree trunk can be laden with dozens of orchid species. A single animal may carry other animals with it. A single leaf surface can provide anchorage and refuge for the growth of lichens and fungi. Insects such as mosquitoes can host viruses and parasites throughout their life cycles. Each of the birds, frogs, lizards or snakes in rainforests can be carrying at least one parasite species to which the animal is unencumbered nor adversely affected. We have scarcely scratched the surface in knowing the extent and forms of biodiversity on planet Earth, let alone the roles biodiversity plays in our daily life and humanity’s existence. Biodiversity is like an iceberg. We see only the tip of the iceberg, most of it and the larger part is only revealed as we explore and understand deeper.

Change is the very essence of biodiversity. The dynamic processes that have occurred on this planet have created, and are still creating, biodiversity. This diversity of life lies in the properties of their DNA. If all living things on Earth contained identical genes or DNA, then there could be only one species. All of us would be an identical twin of every other. However, while DNA is generally passed on from parents to offspring with great fidelity, occasional mistakes do occur. Tiny errors in copying cell DNA occur when the genes are replicating. During reproduction and cell division, DNA can be passed from one generation to another along with these molecular errors. Such aberrations can be small or big. Purine and pyrimidine bases contained on the helical strands of DNA could have changed through deletion, substitution or addition. More drastic changes could have occurred too. Pieces of genes on the DNA could have been deleted due to some internal or external causes. There is an upside to these mistakes, called mutations.. They are definitive origins of all biodiversity. It is through these mistakes that all life forms evolve and biodiversity is created. Errors can occur at random anywhere in the DNA. Mutations that result in bad features of the species, making it incapable of competing with the rest, will ultimately drive the species to extinction. Beneficial mutations, on the other hand, result in the successful reproduction and spread of the species, displacing the original species. This is in essence the process of natural selection.

In the rainforests, there is a continual pushing and shoving match among species in search of food, water, sunlight and space. It is a wonder how, despite such fierce competition, these many different species can still live together. On the contrary, this continuous struggle to survive is actually the very reason why a huge variety of different species exists in the rainforest today. Here many animals have evolved and adapted to eating specific plants or animals for survival. They eat what’s theirs and leave the rest to be devoured by others. By becoming specialized feeders of certain plants, fruits or animals that few other species are able to eat, they avoid competition for food. Therefore they are able to live side by side without outcompeting each other to extinction.

I once posed a question to Fred Sheldon, an ornithologist, from the Smithsonian Institute along the trail in Danum Valley.

Why do hornbills have such huge beaks? That looks insanely heavy and clumsy to be carrying around when flying? I asked.

Those beaks give them a great advantage over other birds with smaller beaks. Only they would have access to bigger fruits; especially fruits hanging on menacingly slender branches. The monstrous beaks also scare away smaller birds. No birds would dare come close to anything pointy twice their size, Fred replied, rather casually.

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Rhinoceros hornbill

Buceros rhinoceros

As for the rainforest plants, they survive competition by having fruits and nuts that get dispersed better than other plant species. Everyone who has been to Asia would have come across the big prickly fruit durian, loved by people in the region. Despite its deeply off-putting smell, durian is regarded as one of the greatest of all fruits not just by the local people but also many animals of the rainforests. It’s dubbed King of all fruits. Instead of producing a visual signal in the form of brightly coloured fruits to get noticed by potential seed dispersers, durian advertises its presence by smell. Rainforest animals love durians. The fruits need to avoid being eaten before the seeds are ready for dispersal. Over millions of years, durians evolve tough fibrous coating with prickly thorns on the outside to avoid early harvest. This might prevent small mammals like squirrels having a go at the unripe fruits. But durians need animals that are big enough to carry their mature seeds for dispersal. Over the same period of evolution, orangutans evolved to develop huge jaw structures complete with dentures enabling them to open up and devour durians. No other rainforest animal can compete with orangutans in this respect and usually stay away from the thorny fruits. The long ubtle processes of evolution and adaptation continue to create more new species in the rainforests even as you are reading this.

I was never so passionate about saving biodiversity until I spent a lot of time learning and understanding about plant and animal species myself. I find truism in the words of Baba Dioum, a Senegalese forestry engineer, who in 1968 said at the General Assembly of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught. Indeed, my commitment to protecting biodiversity was reinforced by knowing and understanding all I needed to know about a certain species, including their special evolutionary features that enabled them to adapt and compete for survival. Their roles and importance in the whole scheme of things; pertaining to their ecological importance in our existence. Biodiversity is our planet’s biological wealth. It has been vitally important in the development of civilizations and cultures in every corner of the world, past and present. Our ancestors had hunted and gathered biodiversity before learning to plant or farm them. Biodiversity has contributed directly to our economy in many ways such as cattle rearing, chicken farming, growing fruits and vegetables. It is easy to appreciate the obvious species of plants and animals important as sources of food and crops. It could however be a little demanding to fathom how species found in abundance and variety in the rainforest could be just as important in our daily life, if not now, then in the future. I was fortunate enough to have been around experts in many aspects of biodiversity. Over my years as an academician in Borneo, I met hundreds of scientists, both foreign and local, who have gravitated to Borneo to study all kinds of life on Earth. Each of them specialists in specific groups of life in the rainforests. I seized the opportunity to be alongside Professor John Beaman a number of times on the summit trail of Mt Kinabalu and other conservation areas in Sabah when I was the Dean of Science, UKM Sabah. Arguably, John Beaman stands as the foremost botanist of the modern era who has contributed a great deal to our knowledge of Mount Kinabalu plants. He first served at the Faculty of Science and Natural Resources, UKM Sabah, as a Fulbright Professor in 1983. So impressed with the flora of Kinabalu, he accepted my invitation to come back to Borneo as the Founding Director of the Institute of Biodiversity and Environmental Conservation (IBEC) when I was the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas). Throughout his two stints in Sabah and Sarawak, John was accompanied by his wife Teffy, a microbiologist with deep botanical knowledge, and his son Reed, also a botanist by training. Together, the family travelled and botanised almost every accessible part of primary rainforests locatable on the map of Sabah and Sarawak. By the end of their botanical sojourn, the Beamans had made massive landmark contributions in many areas of biology and diversity of Bornean plants. I was at Kew Botanical Garden bookshop a few years ago and was delighted to see volumes upon volumes of books John had produced and co-authored on the plants of Mount Kinabalu. These publications are definitely going to become one of the most sought-after and comprehensive scientific resources for all doing research on Bornean plants for many years to come.

Imagine being in the field with a botanist like John Beaman. He introduced and educated me about the many interesting aspects of rainforest flora. His high-pitched South Carolina accent never failed to get my full attention. I can still hear him animatedly explaining the biology of an oft-ignored plant Begonia. On one outing, we were walking along a forest trail in Kinabalu Park. It was as easy as walking across a football field, stride after stride, hardly impeded by any serious obstacle on the path. I could have easily rated the trail as boring with nothing spectacular to see. No birds, no animals and nothing seemed to move except for swaying leaves above, blown by the soft