TWO remarkable conservation stories have passed over my desk of late, one involving the reintroduction of an extinct bee species in England and the other about a really imaginative wildlife sanctuary in Borneo. Let’s deal with the bees first. The short-haired bumblebee became extinct in England some years ago: once widespread across the south of the country, they began dying out in the 1980s as their wildflower-rich grasslands disappeared under shopping malls, highways and housing estates. Bees, as we now all know, are absolutely vital in the natural propagation of food crops and their decline globally has been very worrying, so, as the BBC reports, a group of dedicated conservationists decided that it was time to get the short-haired bumblebee back to England.
Queen bees were collected in their natural habitat, the countryside of Sweden, brought across to England where they were scanned for diseases and other potential problems and then released in a nature reserve at Dungeness in Kent, south eastern England. The first wave of queen colonists struggled a bit with the English summer, but a second wave has done better and all seems to be well. Local Kentish farmers are involved in creating flower-rich meadows for the short-haired bumblebees and other threatened species of bumblebee are beginning to sit up and take notice as well.
From the humble bumblebee to elephants, specifically Bornean elephants. A new and innovative wildlife sanctuary is being created in Sabah, one of the Malaysian states on the island of Borneo. Known as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary, it is part of the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary on the east coast of Sabah, and it is sponsored, rather uniquely, I thought, by seven Japanese companies in a special outreach programme. The 25 hectare sanctuary is run by the Borneo Conservation Trust, an NGO, and the Sabah Wildlife Department and it will take in injured and orphaned elephants, as well as sun bears, proboscis monkeys, orang utangs, clouded leopards and bantang (an Asian buffalo). The idea is to rehabilitate and then release back into the wild these endangered species and all-important wildlife corridors to other such sanctuaries are also planned.
The Borneo elephant is rather special, being smaller than the usual Asian elephant and a subspecies, it is also critically endangered. There are thought to be about 2,500 of them left in the wild on both the Malaysian and Indonesian sectors of the island, but it’s almost impossible to do an accurate survey because of the density of the Bornean jungle.
I can confirm that. We were in Borneo, including Kinabatangan, some years back and had an opportunity to both walk in that jungle and to take a number of little boats up various jungle rivers. There is simply nothing to compare with that tropical jungle, nothing at all. It’s an extremely hot and sticky business, but we were rewarded with seeing a family of orang utangs settling down for the night, a couple of proboscis monkeys, various other monkeys and the jungle’s extraordinary birdlife. Quite an experience. Cheers!
