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Farrah Naz, 28, UK – doctor

Aileen Baker, 49, UK – nurse

Francis Roberts, Malaysia

Suzanne Colpman, 25, UK –architect student

Helen Frudd, 42,UK – secondary school teacher

Population Density checks continued and this group saw a lot of animals in action!! Among them short-tailed macaques chasing a lizard and teasing a mangrove cat snake, a mother orang-utan teaching its baby to swing. Though we didn’t see elephants this month, we saw a Western Tarsier!!! Absolutely amazing!!!!

Other wildlife on the list: 12 orang-utans, proboscis monkeys, long-tailed macaques, water monitor lizards, crocodiles, copperhead racer

Birds: oriental pied hornbill, wrinkled hornbill, rhinoceros hornbill, black hornbill, white crowned hornbill, bushy crested hornbill, stork-billed kingfisher, blue-eared kingfisher, common kingfisher, oriental darter, storm’s stork, large heron, purple heron, night heron (hiding during the day), red & black broadbill, white bellied fish eagle, juvenile serpent eagle, imperial pigeon, greater coucal.

Night life: Western tarsier, baby crocodiles, cricket frog, buffy fish owl, red & black broadbills, night heron, Malaysian blue flycatcher.

Our group was invited to a village wedding on the day we planned for our community project - wonderful surprise

Tree Planting
The tree planting session this time included clearing of water hyacinth to be made into mulch, collecting dried leaves for mulch, collecting and planting seedlings as well as planting seedlings at the tree planting site.

Two huge boatloads of water hyacinths were cleared from the ox-bow lake and brought to the tree planting site. It was super tiring and we had mud in our hair, on our faces and every inch of our clothes! The comment of “I’ve never been this muddy in my entire life!” was repeated again and again…. Well, beats paying for a mud beauty treatment!

It was drizzling on the day we went to collect seedlings. But the group was very gung ho and collected 82 seedlings in a single session from the boardwalk area.

The volunteers planted 21 trees at the tree planting site. The leaves collected by the volunteers and that of the previous month were brought over and used as mulch. The previously dumped water hyacinths were already drying up to cover the rest of the weeds in the area.

Rumble in the Jungle
It was an interesting trek for the volunteers and they came back delighted about the squishing and sloshing session through the mud the entire way.

Helen was bitten by a leech and was really amused that everybody was stuck in so much mud, nobody could help her. It was Francis who finally walked over, “in his own sweet time” to help her pull it off.

Education Programme
This is the 3rd module of the ongoing education programme.

Module objectives: To have the children explore the various sources of rubbish. To have them understand that they contribute towards rubbish in the river and in the environment affecting the wildlife and the health of the river and their lifestyle.

The volunteers used the cloth river to good effect and collected a variety of rubbish to demonstrate the lesson objectives. What they could not find, they drew on cards and the children could choose their rubbish and throw it in the river. By the end of the session, the river was quite a horrendous sight compared to the previous lesson where the river was full of happy creatures.

School Project
This group had to continue the fence building activity and took some time getting used to the parang. But once in motion, we had a couple who started getting really good at it.

Aileen was even named “parang queen” but it is Helen showing off her nicely "chopped" plank here

As rubbish seem to magically appear at the garden site, we also made 2 signs (held by Suzanne) that says “dilarang membuang sampah” and tied a rope border