New Sabah Times
12th March, 2012
“My father found a male tarsier in a new plantation called Sikang, near Gomantong, which is on private land and owned by the villagers”, explained Saroto.
“The forest had been cleared quite a while ago but the land was not used. Upon new plans of usage, the land was being cleared when the tarsier was found and rescued”, added Saroto.
“I brought it back to DGFC where I work as a field research assistant, and together with a student studying nocturnal primates at the field centre, we released it in the forest the next day”, said Saroto.
“For a day, we kept the animal in a cage at the field centre and fed him with insects”, explained Alice Miles, a Cardiff University student leading a project on tarsier and slow loris ecology at DGFC.
“In the evening, we fitted him with a radio-collar and released him in the forest. We called him ‘Lad’ because he’s a male and it is short for ‘ladang’, which means ‘plantation’ in Bahasa Malaysia. The following night, we went back to the forest and looked for him using our telemetry equipment. Lad was found about 150-200 m from where he was released, hunting on the ground,” added Alice.
“With conservation of Sabah’s wildlife being the major mission of DGFC, in collaboration with Sabah Wildlife Department and Cardiff University, understanding the habitat needs, diet and social organisation of tarsiers is key to informing conservation policies for these unique little creatures,” said Dr Benoit Goossens, director of DGFC.
“So far we have collared four tarsiers in the vicinity of the field centre, in Lot 6 of the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. Recently, two females were fitted with radio collars enabling us to identify their sleeping sites and map their home range”, added Goossens.
“We hope that Lad will meet with one of these two females in the near future,” he added.
The nocturnal primate project is funded by three American zoos, Columbus, Cleveland and Phoenix.
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