Below are excerpts of an article I wrote recently for My Malaysia. Happy reading! :)
The Geek Goddess
Home Is Where The Durians Are
I was a young conservation educator at wildlife
NGO in Malaysia when I first met Mike. A British national then in his sixties, he
sported mostly silver strands on his head and an equally silver beard. This was
eight years ago and yes, it’s now my turn to sport salt-and-pepper streaks in
my tresses. No signs of a beard though (thank God!).
Fondly known as Uncle Mike, this sprightly
gentleman has been a valuable asset to Malaysia’s wildlife conservation as a researcher,
trainer and mentor. A multitude of wildlife researchers from different
organisations have benefitted from his wildlife study design and data analysis
“boot camps”. These special workshops share insights on estimating wildlife
occupancy, density, and demographic parameters such as survival.
As for the social side of conservation,
Mike was also instrumental in helping me design a social survey for
stakeholders living in and around Batang Ai National Park and Lanjak-Entimau
Wildlife Sanctuary. These are two protected areas in Sarawak where viable orang
utan populations have been found. The social survey was a culmination of years
of conservation education activities in these areas, and they served to foster
awareness and sense of ownership amongst the communities.
My team and I were very lucky to have Mike on
board as our mentor and main architect of the survey. He assisted us during months of designing and
testing survey questions to avoid bias, besides doing simulations and modelling
to explore different sample sizes and sampling strategies. Based on results of
this study, the first species-specific radio programme in Sarawak was developed
and broadcasted to promote the importance of protected areas and the ecosystem
services that they provide.
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