Taking you back to June 2018, we installed a nestbox onto a Mallotus muticus tree at Sukau Rainforest Lodge (SRL) to provide home for hornbills.  In 2019 itself, we expanded our initiative by installing another two nesting boxes sponsored by SRL and Borneo Eco Tours respectively. Built by the skilful chap Helson Hassan, we hope these boxes will encourage the breeding of hornbills as where the destruction of trees has made natural nesting impossible. 

We had the Wildlife Survey and Protection (WSP) team installed another hornbill box at SRL and we tell you...this job requires well-experienced personnel like Eddie and Ahmad from WSP to put it up at the height of 58feet on aCaralia Brachiatta, locally known as Meransi tree. The tree itself stands at 82feet tall!

Another successful installation at Kinabatangan Rasig- located adjacent to lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary and about 2km from Pangi Forest Reserve. The XL-sized nest box that weighs about 80kg was installed onto a Resak tree at the height of 40feet. We hope that this special gift would attract large-bodied Rhinoceros hornbills and White-Crowned hornbills.

Hope for good news!

This is not the first of its kind. We hope for this to be another conservation success in saving Borneo’s hornbills. Just like in 2013, five artificial nest boxes were set up along the river in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Reserve courtesy of a local NGO and its partners. Four years later, a pair of rhinoceros hornbills nested in the box and managed to successfully raise a chick until it fledged.

Though we have not had our successes of hornbills nesting, there were several sightings of different species of hornbills inspecting the box. Among our visitors were Bushy Crested hornbills, Oriental Pied hornbills and Wrinkled hornbills.

The Godfather of Biodiversity, Thomas Lovejoy once said, “If you take care of birds, you take care of most of the environmental problems in the world.