Last days

Our last few surveys have now taken place. We’ve had a number of visitors during these trips to the forest.

First, Junaidi Payne, Marshall Mathews and Fredelis Bungin from WWF Malaysia and Borneo Rhino Alliance visited us for a few days. We chatted about rhinos and dogs, and they came to see how we worked so that they could evaluate the potential for using dogs for rhino surveys in Sabah.

Here’s Junaidi pondering the dogs.

Marshall taking a break on the long hike into the forest.

And Fred leaping dexterously from rock to rock in a stream.

We went to a couple of wallows, but we didn’t find any new dung.

Julianne Becker from the WWF office in Hanoi came to shoot some footage for a film on the rhino survey.

It was time to put on those WWF t-shirts and do our thing in front of the camera.

The dogs performed as expected as well.

And that was the end of that.

We’ve now finished the dung collection survey. In total we found and sampled 22 dung piles. These will be sent off to Queens University in Ontario, Canada, for genetic analysis. Once the analysis is complete, we will know exactly how many rhinos were responsible for the dung, what sex each of them are, and how they are related to each other. People keep asking us how many rhinos we think there are – we don’t know yet and we won’t know for another few months. Watch this space for the answer!

In the next few weeks we’ll continue blogging. Our lives will be more mundane, so instead of boring you with the details of what rhino dung finders do after the survey is over, we will continue to post pictures of the forest, dogs, people and, if you're lucky, barely visible rhino signs, until we have run out.