The 2016 monitoring field season began in early December with the teams heading up to the northern transects. The transect schedule is carefully planned in advance, in order to ensure that all of the difficult and hard to reach transects are completed before the rains arrive and make the roads impassable. The five field teams have been heading into the forest for between four and six days at a time. So far approximately 700km have been walked, with around 600 still left to go!
here have been some super results, with the number of sightings of the key primate and ungulate species increasing with every trip. There have even been sightings of wild cattle (banteng and gaur) – which are very rare. The monitoring teams have also been contributing many reports of illegal activities to the law enforcement SMART database, which will help inform the enforcement strategy for SPF. If all continues to go to plan, the monitoring teams should complete surveys on all 40 transects by June.