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The Orang Asli, an indigenous community in Malaysia, have received a delicious reward for protecting the Helmeted Hornbills and their forest home, as a healthy forest provides the opportunity to collect and sell a special Tualang honey.
Throughout the dense tropical rainforest of the Belum-Temenggor Forest Complex (BTFC) in Malaysia, Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) Hornbill Guardian teams patrol the landscape in search of Helmeted Hornbills. The Hornbill Guardians are also members of the Indigenous community of Malaysia called the Orang Asli. Since 2004, they have been working with MNS to protect the Critically Endangered Helmeted Hornbill and other hornbill species through community patrol and monitoring units, along with a more unusual initiative – the sale of Tualang honey and beeswax. These initiatives have inspired other creative and often delicious Helmeted Hornbill protection programs from BirdLife Partners across the region.
The Helmeted Hornbill is found in four countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand and Brunei Darussalam. The birds use the cavities of large, tall rainforest trees for nesting because hornbills cannot dig or build their own nests. Their presence in these forests is important, as they eat the fruit and disperse the seeds throughout the rainforest. Unfortunately, what makes these birds different from other hornbills also makes them more vulnerable to poaching. Unlike the hollow casques of other hornbills, the Helmeted Hornbill’s casque is mostly solid. Hunters hunt birds and sell their casques which are then intricately carved and sold for thousands of dollars.
Helmeted Hornbill, copyright Stijn de Win, from surfbirds galleries
When MNS began working to protect and preserve the Helmeted Hornbill and its forest habitat, they turned to the people who live next to the birds, the Orang Asli. The Orang Asli, directly translated as the original people, live in the forests around Peninsular Malaysia. While many have moved to towns across the country, the Kampung Chuweh community still lives in BTFC.
In conserving Helmeted Hornbills, MNS sought to ‘marry’ both modern conservation methods with traditional Orang Asli ecological knowledge about BTFC and hornbills. Chin-Aik Yeap, the project manager and co-founder of the MNS Hornbill Conservation Project, developed a program to do just that, and called it Hornbill Guardians. Six Orang Asli were hired to walk through the forested hills and ride boats around the jade-colored river valleys, searching for and tracking Helmeted Hornbills and the 9 other hornbill species in the area. When Hornbill Guardians find a nest, they take turns guarding the tree and the nest until the chicks hatch. To date, the MNS Hornbill Conservation Project has recorded over 100 hornbill nests in BTFC comprising 9 species.
When not working as Hornbill Guardians, some team members collaborate with other members of their community by scaling the Helmeted Hornbill’s favorite tree, the Tualang tree Kompassia excelsa. This tree is also popular with Asian Giant Honeybees Apis dorsata which produces a rather special Tualang honey. Between March and July every year, groups from Kampung Chuweh climb up to 50 meters high in these huge trees to collect this honey. Despite the incredible risk, the payoff for the community is huge, and many refer to the extra income from honey as a ‘bonus month’.
The involvement of MNS in Tualang honey started when honey harvesters in Yeap sought help in finding a more profitable market for their product. Yeap learned about the community’s honey production and how little their income was. He promoted Tualang honey to MNS members in wealthier cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang and found support from some individuals. These early buyers became the foundation for forest honey and many continue to support harvesters. All profits from sales are returned to the harvesters, and the hope is that by developing demand for honey, the demand for a healthy forest will go hand in hand. Yeap added that, “it’s kind of creating a really good story about preserving the forest to stay as intact as possible, as clean as possible, to benefit the species and also to benefit the Orang Originally inhabiting the landscape through the ability to harvest honey and forest products.”
After building a good relationship with buyers in the cities, Yeap received another request, “one of the honey buyers asked us if we had beeswax”. Until then, the Chuweh community usually threw away the wax after squeezing the honey. When Yeap first asked Kampung Chuweh if they wanted to sell beeswax, there was no answer, but “the year after that, they suddenly gave me 8 kilos of Tualang beeswax, purified beeswax made by 5 makers. So without warning, they produced the product, so we had to follow up and find buyers. And just like that, the community had another product to sell. In 2021, two MNS members came to the village and taught the women how to add their wax to vibrantly patterned cloth to create a beeswrap. These artisan products have also been sold in the affluent parts of Malaysia.
The Hornbill Guardians and the sale of Tualang honey and by-products help the Helmeted Hornbill advocacy in the communities around Belum-Temenggor and in the city. These initiatives also help build community trust in MNS and protect valuable habitat. There is still a threat from poachers “sniffing” in the area, but with such a strong relationship based on trust, Yeap hopes to ensure that the Orang Asli will not become profiteers for poachers. For now, the focus of MNS is to continue to monitor the hornbill and the forest, train the next generation of Hornbill Guardians and at the same time improve the livelihood of the villagers through the development and sale of non-timber forest products such as Tualang honey and beeswax. MNS also hopes to train Kampung Chuweh to handle this business on its own in the future.
In other countries where Helmeted Hornbills live, BirdLife Partners has also developed programs to help the species. Some of these programs have drawn inspiration from MNS in finding creative ways to preserve bird habitat.
In Myanmar, the Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA) has also worked with the Karen Indigenous communities surrounding the Helmeted Hornbill habitat. There, forest habitats face threats from logging and road construction. “Indigenous people in the Tanintharyi Region are at the forefront of a real and dangerous battle for the conservation of the Helmeted Hornbill,” noted Thiri De We Aung from BANCA. Karen forest law enforcers patrol the forests and protect against poaching, while youth from these communities participate in training sessions to observe and collect data on birds in a program that following in the footsteps of Hornbill Guardians from MNS.
The Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) has been inspired by the way MNS uses non-forest products and is working on applying similar methods to another favorite regional delicacy. The district of Klong Saeng in Surat Thani province in Southern Thailand is already known for its fruit trees, particularly the unique type of durian. This Klong Saeng durian is known for having a unique flavor and small size that comes from its environmentally friendly production methods. The durian farmers of Khlong Saeng still rely on flies, bees and bats for their pollination. These bats also happen to overlap the habitats of Helmeted Hornbills. The idea is that by promoting durian production, the habitat of bats and birds will be protected by those who depend on them.
Previously, BCST’s Helmeted Hornbill work focused on tourism, but Khwankhao Sinhaseni, BCST’s director, felt the team needed to see how these birds affect the daily lives of the community. The team asked the people of Khlong Saeng about which non-wood forest products to promote, and the community suggested for BCST to explore durian. While this project is just getting started, Khwankhao is very excited about its prospects and the way in which their connection with MNS has sparked this idea, “when we work with different partners we always learn from each other and I think this is what BirdLife is all about”.
In Southern Sumatra in Indonesia, Hutan Harapan is home to several highly endangered species including Helmeted Hornbills. This rainforest area also contains indigenous communities including Batin Sembilan who use non-timber forest products with the support of Hutan Harapan Management. Biodiversity coordinator for Hutan Harapan, Elva Gemita, shared that her team conducted surveys among local community members to understand their knowledge and perspective on hornbills. The team is also conducting bioacoustics surveys along a proposed coal road and moving into more native dipterocarp tress where Helmeted Hornbills are found.
We would like to thank BirdLife Gala Dinners, and Species Champions, Peter Smith, Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, Fondation Segre, March Conservation Fund, National Geographic Society, Restore Species Partnership and the European Union for their continued funding and support of our work with the Helmeted Hornbill.
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