As our rainforest resources dwindle, so the scientific understanding of their systems becomes more critically important. It is hoped that this knowledge can help to promote more sustainable management and conservation in the future. The Royal Society's South East Asia Rainforest Research Program (SEARRP) has now been running at Danum Valley for over 20 years. Due to the continuing success of this and other research programs, the facilites at the Danum Valley Field Centre (DVFC) are now outdated and inadequate. Consequently...

I’ve recently been off on site visits with friends from the USA. In fact Mauricio is Mexican and Susan is German but they both practice in Los Angeles with a company called Urban Networks. As the name suggests they have a largely urban portfolio but are pretty hot designers and are well up on sustainability issues. I’m working together with them on proposals for a new Studies Centre in the Imbak Conservation Area. Until this trip we had only met by Skype conference but over the course of ten days on the road we developed...

In front of me the river is making it’s way over a small waterfall and behind me I can hear the girls carrying on in the kitchen as they prepare lunch. I am sitting next to a 1:50,000 scale relief model of the Maliau Basin Conservation area which is to be my home environment for the next three months. Home itself is an accretion of zinc roofed shelters that meander across folds in the ground between leggy rainforest trees. As a white man and therefore head and shoulders taller than most Malaysians, I have to continually watch...

When I first met Prof Ho Coy Choke he was hunched over his plate clumsily shoveling rice into his mouth. He spoke in a loud abrupt tone without looking up. Once his meal was finished he straightened up, slid a pair of heavy rimmed glasses onto his nose and transferred his attention to me. I tried hard to return the scrutiny but between his heavily squinted eyebrows I was not even able to determine the colour of his pupils. That he was a man of powerful intellect was immediately apparent by the chain of his questions. That he loved...