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	Christmas and New Year I spent in the Baram, maybe inevitably! First we went to Long Kepang for a formal meeting arranged with the village head weeks ago, but he wasn't there and no one was expecting us. Then I went back to Long Sabai and spent three days - including Christmas Day - watching the rain and swollen rivers. By the 27th the weather had improved and we went off for a four-day trek, this time to the headwaters of the Tutoh river. Very hilly terrain up to 1100m with lots of river crossings. Again we found clear signs of a big animal feeding on spiny palms and pandans, but nothing to indicate which species - no footprints remained or even hairs caught on the thorns. Then back to Long Lellang, where we drank to the memory of Pope Gregory XIII, who had decreed that the year should begin on 1 January.
	I went back to England on leave for a couple of weeks in November; far too late in the year for me to be so far north, but only a little frost and snow! Back in Asia, early December was a time for meetings. First I went to the Biology in Asia conference in Singapore. There were lots of papers on biotechnology, so it was good that Jane Goodall gave the opening keynote address and fixed attention on conservation in the real world outside the lab. The following week I was in Kuala Lumpur for a workshop on human resource needs for biodiversity conservation in Malaysia, which links into our work with parks and wildlife officers.
	In September I was back at Long Sabai, at the northern end of our area, looking for Rafflesia flowers and orang utan. We found plenty of vines but no signs of Rafflesia flowers at the site where they had previously been seen. Pusa, the village head, and Ukau then took me for a three-trek into the upper part of the Semali river area, where we found thorny rattan palms which had been torn apart by some large and dexterous animal to get at the palm heart. Then I met up with Kelawing, our local liaison person, and went to more longhouses, this time Kenyah longhouses along the banks of the Baram river itself.
	Later in August I went in to Long Lellang with Yenni, this time by road - a long trip along logging roads from Long Temala. We went up to the field camp on the slopes of Mt Murud Kecil and started the survey session there. After a few days, I left Yenni to complete this, and went across to Kelesa Camp to meet Kelawing and John. We visited a number of Penan villages on the Salaan and Selungo rivers to explain what we were doing in the forest and to ask them not to interfere with our cameras or trail markers.
	In early August we finally got all the components in place for the first automatic weather station at Long Lellang in the Upper Baram. We took all the components to the local school first and with the cooperation of the teachers showed them how it works and what's inside the various boxes; we hope they'll be less tempted to interfere with the equipment if they already know about it. It took the entire afternoon to dig the hole and get everything set up and we downloaded the first set of data a week later. In the meantime, Kelawing and I had a first go at collecting meal records in Long Lellang and Long Sabai. We also wanted to interview hunters, but everyone was busy with their farms and no one was out hunting. Nevertheless, we did get reports of Rafflesia flowers and what might be an orang utan in the area.
	Our programme in the Upper Baram is expanding: we formed a second research team to look in detail at areas which will be logged in the next few months, in particular locating salt licks, hornbill nest trees, and other features which should be protected during logging operations. This team will also follow up with post-logging surveys later in the year. On this side of the study area, the timber company is helping with infrastructure and transport. We've taken on a new researcher to lead the second team, a recent graduate from UNIMAS, and we also have a new liaison person to help with contacts with villages. In July, we had a long trip for the new and old staff to work together, visit the villages in the new area, and to set up camera traps and transects in the new area.
	June began with various meetings and so on to arrange future programmes and look for funding, plus time spent preparing equipment for the weather station planned for Long Lellang. So I only spent a week in the jungle, with a visit to a further village in the area and a few days at the camp which John had set up on the slopes of Murud Kecil and to help him with the transect surveys.
	The main feature of my May trip to the UK was to attend my nephew's wedding. And of course I also took the opportunity to visit with the family.
	Our first shipment of five camera traps arrived at the end of April. Not enough to do a systematic survey, but enough to familiarise ourselves with the equipment and get our local trackers clued in to choosing good positions for them. I was on leave in the UK for three weeks in May, but John took the traps to Ulu Baram and began experimenting with them. We didn't get any rare animals this time, but the traps at a salt lick picked up a surprisingly big group of pig-tailed macaques.
	Our April field trip to Upper Baram was quite busy. In addition to the regular surveys of wildlife, fruiting trees and animal tracks, we mapped all the old research trails around Long Lellang so that we can enter our observations into a GIS database. We made a reconnaissance trip to Ulu Semali, a remote part of the area in the next valley to our Ulu Sebuloh research site. The route went over a high ridge (running up to 1000m), then crossed a plateau with thin sandy soils and typical heath forest, bare rock and even a patch of grassland. Then we visited two more communities to explain what we want to do in their forests. We had a good meeting at Long Benalih, but almost all the Long Kepang people were away at their farms when we arrived, so we couldn't have a proper meeting.
	At the end of March we ran a wildlife identification course for a second batch of Sarawak Forestry Corporation Sdn Bhd enforcement officers. Following discussion of the outcomes of the course last October, we made a few changes to the programme, in particular spending more time on plant identification with Dr Kit Pierce. We also had Jasbeer Kaur from the Chemistry Department to talk about their work on DNA identification, as well as Chris Shepherd from TRAFFIC and Rambli Ahmad from the Tourism Board.
	Our area at Long Lellang includes the 1500m mountain Murud Kecil or 'Little Murud'; big Murud is the highest mountain in Sarawak at 2424m. Murud Kecil forms a long ridge guarded by steep cliffs. We were interested to see if it was high enough to have genuinely montane forest on top - similar to the vegetation on Murud or Mulu - and if the area was big enough to support populations of specialist montane animals and plants. In March, we climbed up onto the north end of the ridge, hoping to be able to follow the ridge south to its highest (and broadest) point, but found the ridge almost impassable, with the mossy forest interspersed with cliffs. It looks like an attack from the west side would be easier.
	Mid-February I flew in to Long Lellang again, going first to a Penan village on the border between our study area and Pulong Tau National Park, together with a Kelabit guide who knows them well. The rice harvest was still in full swing, so most of the villagers were away at their farms, but we did manage to talk to the village head and they were aware of what we had already done in the past. They were happy for us to do more wildlife research in their area. The second visit was back to Long Main, where I had been in December, and from there on to the camp which colleagues Cynthia Chin and John Mathai had set up in the forest. I had time to accompany John on a line transect survey and to go with him and Pen, our local field assistant, to a nearby salt lick, before trotting back to Long Lellang to catch the plane.
	One of the best techniques to find out about the most shy and secretive animals in the rain forest is to use camera traps - cameras placed in the forest which automatically take pictures of passing animals. We plan to use this next year in the Upper Baram area to see what species are there which have gone undetected so far. We haven't used them yet in Sarawak, but WCS Thailand has a lost of experience with them, so we asked their Director, Dr Tony Lynam, to come across and explain how they could be used to gather wildlife data and to give some preliminary advice on designing a study in the Baram forests. He ran a one-day workshop for us in Kuching, then went up to the field site to meet Samling staff and to look at the terrain.
	ARCBC ran a training course in Thailand in January 2004, and WCS helped with teaching 4 days on wildlife monitoring techniques. We focused primarily on line transects, camera trapping, tracks and signs, and point counts for birds. I went along to cover some of the study design and data analysis sections. I'm not a statistician, but I suppose they thought I wouldn't get into too advanced stuff! The training went well, with twenty keen participants from all over the region and lots of questions and discussion of practical problems they had with wildlife monitoring back home. I stopped over for a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur to look at pet shops and restaurants, and got back to Kuching just in time for the Chinese New Year celebrations.
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