The Sunda clouded leopard has always been shrouded in mystery. Only declared a separate species from its mainland cousin, the Borneo clouded leopard, in 2006, the IUCN lists the cat as Endangered. The distinction between the Borneo clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulas) and the Sunda clouded leopard (Neofelis diardi) was made by ground-breaking molecular coding technologies […]
Tag: borneo
World’s most cryptic feline photographed in logging concession
The bay cat is arguably the world’s least-known member of the cat family (Felidae). Although first described by scientists in 1874, no photo existed of a living specimen until 1998 and a wild cat in its rainforest habitat wasn’t photographed until five years later. Given this, scientists with Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Imperial […]
Conserving the long-neglected freshwater fish of Borneo
Borneo is a vast tropical island known for orangutans, rhinos, elephants, sun bears, proboscis monkeys, hornbills, and ubiquitous leeches. Conservationists have championed all of these species (aside from the leeches) in one way or another, but like many tropical regions Borneo’s freshwater species have long been neglected, despite their rich biodiversity and importance to local […]
Rhino populations in Sumatra, Borneo should be combined to save Sumatran rhino from extinction
A new study argues for treating endangered Sumatran populations in Borneo and Sumatra as “a single conservation unit”, lending academic support to a controversial proposal to move wild rhinos from Malaysia to Indonesia. The paper, authored by an international team of rhino experts and published in the journal Oryx, says that genetic differences between the […]
Endangered primates and cats may be hiding out in swamps and mangrove forests
What happens to animals when their forest is cut down? If they can, they migrate to different forests. But in an age when forests are falling far and fast, many species may have to shift to entirely different environments. A new paper in Folia Primatologica theorizes that some 60 primate species and 20 wild cat […]
Sumatran rhino population plunges, down to 100 animals
Less than 100 Sumatran rhinos survive in the world today, according to a bleak new population estimate by experts. The last survey in 2008 estimated that around 250 Sumatran rhinos survived, but that estimate now appears optimistic and has been slashed by 60 percent. However conservationists are responding with a major new agreement between the […]
Has WWF just condemned the last rhino in Kalimantan?
WWF-Indonesia recently caught the attention of the global media with their announcement that the Sumatran rhinoceros still exists in Indonesian Borneo, some 40 years after being declared extinct there. This sounds like great news for biodiversity conservation. But is it really? Sumatran rhinos were once wide-spread in South-East Asia, but poaching for their horn decimated […]
An insidious threat to tropical forests: over-hunting endangers tree species in Asia and Africa
A fruit falls to the floor in a rainforest. It waits. And waits. Inside the fruit is a seed, and like most seeds in tropical forests, this one needs an animal—a good-sized animal—to move it to a new place where it can germinate and grow. But it may be waiting in vain. Hunting and poaching […]