Birds and bats of Loagan Bunut

Covering about 650 hectares, Loagan Bunut is the only large natural inland lake in Sarawak.

The Loagan Bunut National Park area was gazetted in 1990 and covers an area of 10,736 hectares, including the lake and the surrounding peat swamp and mixed dipterocarp forests. The lake and the surrounding forests are important habitat for a wide array of wildlife. 

But Loagan Bunut is not an ordinary lake: during the prolonged dry period from March to September each year, the lake dries up and turns into a large expanse of dry cracked mud, and the water level in the surrounding peatland also drops. The production of new leaves, flowers and fruit is highly seasonal, which may affect the composition and density of birds and bats.

In 2005-07 we investigated the composition and densities of these two groups of animals in Loagan Bunut. Four transects were cut in the peat swamp forests and two in the adjacent mixed dipterocarp forests. Each transect was 2 km long and we did point counts for birds at 200m intervals. Eight harp traps and eight mist-nets were set up along the transects in the morning or late evening to capture bats and birds. 

We did a total of 1,568 bird mist-net sampling sessions and 3,136 mist-net and harp-trap sessions for bats. Together with point counts and opportunistic sightings, we recorded 187 species of birds and 38 species of bats in the Park.

Loagan Bunut has 30% of all Bornean bird species and 41% of all Bornean bat species. One species of bird, Storm's stork, is listed as Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, four others are Vulnerable and 46 are Near Threatened. One bat species is listed as Vulnerable and another six are Near Threatened. The Park has two bird and two bat species which are endemic to Borneo.

At the end of the project, we wrote a book entitled “Birds and Bats of Loagan Bunut National Park, Sarawak, Malaysia” which describes some of the birds and bats species that occur there, and discusses the importance of conserving protected areas and peat swamp forests of Sarawak. The book also includes a section on nature based activities for school children pertaining to birds and bats. This book is published by the UNDP-GEF Funded Peat Swamp Project of Malaysia and is available from the Forest Research Institute Malaysia, 52109 Kepong, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.

Our work in Loagan Bunut was funded by the United Nations Development Programme-Global Environmental Facility (UNDP-GEF) under the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Tropical Peat Swamp Forests and Associated Wetland Ecosystems Project. WCS also acknowledges the in-kind contribution by Sarawak Forest Department and Forestry Corporation in this project.

For further enquiries, please contact Jason Hon at .