The Scientific Expedition to the Highest Peak of Sarawak
Mount Murud is a sandstone mountain in Pulong Tau National Park, Limbang, Sarawak. Standing tall among the Kelabit highlands, the highest peak of this mountain reached a staggering height at 2,424 m (7,953 ft) above sea level. Hence crowned as the highest peak of Sarawak. Locals regards this mountain as a sacred place where they hold an annual pilgrimage to celebrate its majesty. This resulted in the existence of huge settlements of wooden houses on a plateau called Church Camp near to Batu Linanit, one of sacret place on the mountain.
Lack of scientific records on small mammals from this mountain intrigued our interest to explore and record the fauna here. Armed with passion, traps and some Apollo waffle (read as energy snack), a team of six people embark on the journey into documenting small mammals’ diversity of the majestic Mount Murud, focusing on bats, shrews, treeshrews and rats. The team made up of three institutions; UNIMAS (Am, Finaz and Syam), Louisiana State University (Jon and Heru) and University of Montpellier (Quentin).
Our flight embarks from Kuching to Lawas on 24th July 2019 and move to Ba’kelalan on the next day through logging road. The road trip was quite challenging as for that 8 hours trip, we spent most of the time bouncing (in sync) and bumping our head onto the windshield. Fun but gruesome experience. Finally, around 5pm, we reached our first camp, Lepo Bunga camp. The camp is located at 1620m a.s.l. with a wonderful view. That evening, we cleaned the camp, set up our portable lab and started deploying our traps on the next morning.
Time goes fast when we are having a good time. In no time, we spent 15 days at Lepo Bunga and the diversity in the area was very impressive. We continued our expedition to the higher camp, the Church Camp (1,970 m a.s.l.). It took us around three hours from Lepo Bunga. Luckily for us, the weather is nice and that ease our hike up. Upon reaching Church Camp, we were really impressed with the sight of the camp. There are more than 100 wooden houses that can accommodate up to 1500 people at one time. Interestingly, while we were there for another 15 days, the camp was totally empty. Together with two of our guides, Pak Andy and Pak Janggut, the village was inhabited by only eight humans. Sometimes, you will get that eerie moments. In Church camp, Jon did daily summit hike to check his traps up there. Impressive.
We left Church camp on 19th August 2019 and reached Kuching on 21st August 2019. The trip was a successful trip with some interesting findings. Currently, our team is in the middle of preparing the manuscript. Preliminary data suggested that along the altitudinal gradient, the number of species decreases as moving higher up the mountain. To sum up, this fruitful trip would not be possible without the support and advices from our supervisors; Associate Professor Dr Faisal Ali and Dr Jacob Esselstyln. Our local organizer; Cikgu Sang Sigar and family. Finally, our friendly guides; Pak Andy and Pak Janggut. Thanks for your contributions and we are looking forward for more expeditions in the future.
