TABIN: SABAH'S GREATEST WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

With the recent capture of a wild rhinoceros on film at Tabin Wildlife Reserve - an historic first in Borneo - Sabah's largest sanctuary has confirmed its vital importance in conserving Borneo's wildlife. The Sumatran rhino is critically endangered, with perhaps as few as 20 individuals in Sabah, and maybe only 30 in the entire island of Borneo. Wildlife enthusiasts who come to Tabin know there's no chance they'll spot one of its iconic rhinos. After all, scientists have been conducting surveys since 1990 and until recently, virtually all they've seen is footprints and droppings. Unlike the elephant, the rhinoceros is incredibly shy and has a vast area at Tabin (some 120,000 hectares, twice the size of Singapore) in which to hide. Sabah Wildlife Department, together with several conservation agencies, not only conducts rhino research at Tabin but guards against poachers. One of the reasons for the critical status of the rhino is that it has been hunted for its horns for generations - despite the fact that research shows the horn has no medicinal value whatsoever. However, visitors have the opportunity of seeing a remarkable range of wildlife, including the two other large mammals for which Tabin is famed: the Asian Pygmy Elephant and the Wild Ox (tembadau).

Tabin's forest was selectively logged from the 1960s until late in the 1980s, so apart from a core area of almost 9,000 hectares of pristine rainforest, and several smaller virgin jungle reserves, most of Tabin Wildlife Reserve is secondary forest. You might think that this diminishes the amount of wildlife, yet paradoxically, you often have a better chance of seeing animals and birds in a secondary forest. The oil palm estates which surround much of Tabin attract animals such as elephants, pigs, civets, leopard cats, hornbills, eagles and other raptors, so early morning and night drives along the dirt roads near the Resort can be surprisingly productive.


No visit to Tabin is complete without a visit to the Lipad mud volcano, one of several in the forest which provide "salt licks" for animals and even birds. A 700-metre trek off the main boundary road leads through the forest - where everal of the trees have magnificent buttress roots and luminous fungi might be spotted - to a natural clearing about 80 metres across. In the centre of this, liquid mud burps up gently, and as it flows outwards, hardens to form greyish soil with small boulders and stones which have been spewed up when the "volcano" has one of its periodic mild eruptions.