Snapshot of March

Playing here with photos. Here is a compilation of our March life.

Zipping Up Khmer New Year

So, we've been working on this zipline thing for a while.

About a year ago I posted a grizzly Ben taking a maiden run on the first zipline.  We didn't complete that little project until just now, and in time for Khmer New Year. He installed another, and there is now a pair of ziplines that run from one hillside to another over a small valley. There are some spectacular views if you get yourself comfortable enough to look out while travelling about fifty metres above the forest floor. Here is a taste, but you should really come for yourself and try it out! Sorry about the wobbly camera and all the bits I should edit out if I knew how.. maybe one day I'll work it out.



And if you aren't too dizzy, here it he return trip


And more of the same.. just with a guy (our worker Nyep) in the picture.


Oh, and I need to tell about Khmer New Year.. next post.

Surviving Khmer New Year

We decided that we should host an open house for Khmer New Year. In Rovieng where we lived before, Khmer New Year was always an open house whether we wanted it to be, or not. Perhaps a thousand people would pass through our house to see our animals and how the strange foreigners lived. We were on the road to the local creek where everyone liked to “da-laing” (play-walking) so it was natural to stop by.

Living out in the middle of nowhere now, and wanting to show the locals what we are doing, we thought it would be a good idea to invite the people out to see and experience a little of what we mean by “ecotourism.” Ben worked hard to get two ziplines up and running and we figured we could charge a small fee to cover some of the operating expenses.

Well, the crowds came. Not quite as many as in Rovieng.  But being thirty minutes from the closest village and about one and a half hours to the district town, it is a quite a journey and plenty of people made the trip out: thankfully not a thousand, but more than enough and manageable. Many tried the ziplines (just over thirty people each day). More chose to watch!

We were prepared this time. I made some signs up with my rudimentary Khmer writing skills and we posted rubbish bags all over the place. Most were very kind and used the rubbish bags. I am still astounded at the lack of litter. So our lesson learned is that preparation pays.

In front of our house

Names, Definitions and Details

I started up this blog before we had a name for our enterprise. So I went to the most obvious and titled the blog, "Ben's Forest Project." Having been working in the development industry forever, our whole lives revolved around "projects" and this was Ben's latest!
Then later,in one of our brainstorming sessions, we came up with the idea of being treed: as in stuck up a tree; as in filling a place with trees.  Pretty much what we want to accomplish here.
So today, I have re-titled the blog (but not the address): Adventures in Being Treed.
And we decided on beTreed or beTreed adventures as our official name. Hope it works and doesn't confuse.
We are still working on getting a proper website going. Working with less than edge speed internet and far from my designer has meant things like that go very very slow. Meshes with everything else in our life at least.

Community and Conservation

Our whole family is introverted: Amelie perhaps the least so.  So when we hear that a group of people are coming to visit, we get a little apprehensive. Khmers, on the other hand, are probably the most sanguine, extroverted people in the world.  None can imagine living out in the middle of nowhere. Don’t we get bored?

Last month, someone called Ben and told him that they wanted to bring a bunch of students from the district town to visit the forest. This is good (despite our preference for solitude):  an opportunity to show the locals what we are doing and hopefully to encourage the little part of “conservation” that should be in all of us. Wel,l the bunch of students turned out to be about two hundred miscellaneous people coming out for a day of “dar-laing.” A popular Khmer word literally translated as “play-walking” and meaning to go on an outing. And when Khmer people go dar-laing they ALL go dar-laing. They mostly arrived in small groups on motorbikes, trickling in.

Sitting everyone down at the outset was a little difficult – impossible. We had wanted to let everyone know the rules (what to do with garbage mostly) but it was too hard. We were not prepared! By the end of the day all four of us were exhausted. Amelie was a great host showing the kids how to play on her swing and monitoring the trampoline. Jarrah pretty much hid all day! The rest of the week, we spent clearing up litter, which our visitors had not been impressed upon, to place in the bins. Failure!

So yesterday, when we heard that our village’s primary school was coming out, it was with a mix of trepidation and delight that we welcomed them. We were so very encouraged that the teachers had initiated this outing with the goal of helping the fourth through six graders to understand what a community forest is. Trepidation caused by our past experience. We were pleasantly surprised. The kids were polite. The teachers organised. Each child had to contribute money for their lunch and the teachers cooked them their picnic lunch. The kids came prepared with questions about the community forest: What was the purpose of the community forest? What the goals were? What the benefits of keeping a community forest were? How big was the community forest? They sat and listened as Ben explained that this forest was for them. That soon, all around there will be no other forest as people develop agriculture and the land is sold off. That soon, if we don’t conserve just a little bit, there will be no people who know the names of the trees, or the animals who make this forest their home, and that so many resources that they get from the forest will no longer be available. We hope that these children will be able to take home just a bit of what they learned. And maybe there will be a little spark in them that can smoulder, allowing them to understand and value our conservation efforts, and contribute themselves. It will take more than just a single outing though. It seems that this generation, before they get old enough to be cynical and stuck doing just what will benefit them now only, that they need to be exposed to different ideas that will maybe help them to think they can conserve rather than destroy.  Just need to operationalise a program!

Porcupines and more porcupines

2 Feb 2015

We have an old porcupine which we had from a baby and brought here from Rovieng.  He has been penned up with the two remaining deer and we would see him (or her) daily when we feed them. Then we didn’t see him for a few days and a porcupine showed up in the camera trap one night, about a kilometre from the pen. Ben was thinking that just maybe our Porky had escaped since villagers have not seen any porcupines in the area for a while. We weren’t sure. Then one night Soon after, Ben was feeding the deer in the pen and who should be there but Porky and running off into the grass was another porcupine, rattling his pines as he trotted away. We had just read a story on CNN about a lone porcupine in the zoo in Israel. Every night, they found porcupine droppings outside the porcupine enclosure and they were baffled.  When they put a camera trap up, they discovered that there was another porcupine who would come to visit the one in the cage—every night. How sweet. They couldn’t work out where he came from as they zoo is in the middle of town. But apparently, porcupines like friends, and ours now has a friend.  We put our camera trap up and didn’t get a shot with the two porcupines together, but separate shots of two, we think, different individuals. Not totally sure, but they seem to have different “hairstyles.”

Postscript

We have been typing up while offline and waiting for our connection to improve.  Hence these postscripts! Ben was in the garden last night.  While there one of these guys goes scurrying off into the bushes, turning around and rattling his spines. He wasn’t acting very scared. Soon another goes rattling off. One of them must have been our captive one (escaped into the garden).  However two minutes later while walking by the cage, there sits our Porky. Now, who is who? That makes three individuals. And the cage must be compromised.  And worse, the garden fence also useless!

On the Trail

January 26, 2015

By Ben

Our efforts at protecting the immediate area, around our house here, at Phnom Tnout are finally starting to pay off.  Currently we have about 1 sq km. that I would consider 95 percent protected with an additional 5-10 sq. km. being 75 percent protected.  Basically the further one goes from our central hub here the less secure animals are but it’s way better of a situation than last year.

A couple days ago I took an excursion up the mountain to check on a marsh that animals use for drinking.  The number of animals I encountered on my two hour hike, was the most of any walk I’ve taken here to date.  Within a few hundred meters of the house I had already seen silver langurs.  A little further I ran into two peacocks and could hear a third one calling nearby.  I walked under a big tree that had upwards of fifty hornbills feeding on ripe fruit.  A little further the dogs chased a mouse deer although I didn’t get much of a look at it.  Finally I got to the marsh and was surprised to see four woolly necked storks (there is normally only two).  There was also a little pig playing in the mud with the dog immediately chased away.  As I stood near the shoreline of the marsh inspecting the multitude of animal tracks, I saw a very big boar with nasty looking tusks sticking his head out of the brush not far from me. I held perfectly still and he didn’t immediately realize what I was.  When Sippy (the dog) saw him she tore across the grass to have a go at him.  Her enthusiasm was short lived though when he charged out of the brush straight at her.  With tail tucked tight she made a bee line back to me.  Luckily the   pig wasn’t too upset as he soon stopped and tried again to work out what I was.  Finally he must have got wind of me because he turned and high tailed back to the forest’s edge.  Anyway, it was the best look I’ve had of a wild pig in a long time—especially one that big!  On the way back home I saw several Siamese fireback pheasants including a nice rooster who was right in the trail in front of me.  I also passed another troop of langurs who were not too worried about my presence.  I came home feeling optimistic about the prospect of being able to lead tourists in the forest and actually see animals in their natural habitat.

Postscript, Sharyn

2 February

A couple of days later Ben was out checking one of the camera traps. It had been placed at a water hole and we had previously got shots of sambar deer and banteng there.  It was about six in the evening and just on dusk. He had removed the camera trap to take it to another location and on walking away noticed a noise from behind in the water hole.  A female sambar deer called out and in the distance this crashing sound came – right towards Ben.  It was the doe’s baby who was coming to his momma. Ben didn’t move and he just ran right up to his mum, right past Ben.