Persistence of Medium to Large Terrestrial Mammals in a Production Forest in Central Sarawak

Maiwald, Marius Joscha (2020) Persistence of Medium to Large Terrestrial Mammals in a Production Forest in Central Sarawak. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

Timber industry is one of the largest generators of work and income in Sarawak, Borneo. Unfortunately, the very nature of this industry is destroying habitat for countless species, many of which are endangered, and facilitates encroachment from hunters. Reduced Impact Logging (RIL) techniques are the latest standard to ensure a sustainable way of extracting timber without disrupting the surrounding ecosystem, but studies to investigate the success of RIL are rare in Sarawak. This study was conducted in five coupes in Kapit Forest Management Unit, field work started in July 2017 and lasted until August 2018. Including sites for the salt lick study, a total of 170 camera trap stations were successfully deployed to collect data on medium to large mammals, yielding a total of 1883 videos and 71,183 images and detected 34 focal species. Analysis between logged, active logging and unlogged coupes showed that mammals showed no significant difference in occupancy and activity pattern, although activity overlap analysis suggests that bearded pig and sambar deer shifted their activity peaks to times when hunters are not active. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) showed that the large-scale habitat parameters Elevation and Forest type have the strongest effect on species assemblage and occurrence, and further analysis with ungulates and smallscale parameters showed a relationship between bearded pig occupancy with frequency of herbaceous plants and two mousedeer species occupancy with frequency of large vines. Examination of data from three salt licks showed that, while only sambar deer, bearded pig and maroon langur directly utilize the salt licks by means of geophagy, the buffer zones around the licks act as wildlife corridors where at least 30 species of medium to large mammals can be found in a radius of 500m around them, further supporting the importance they have as conservation sites.

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