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...

    'Ripe Hairy Red Fruit' introduces several subjects and questions that have been cropping up over the last two years: Imbak Canyon, Maliau Basin and Danum Valley conservation areas The 'economic value' of rainforest conservation Forest rehabilitation and management   On the Arkitrek itself we had an architectural design brief to work to but in many ways this was secondary to the bigger picture that we were involved in. All of these above mentioned themes will crop up in subsequent posts but first a little...

To get things moving I'll publish an edited version of an email that I originally sent on 17 Oct 2004 * * * * * I knew when I took on this job that it would involve chopping down a few rainforest trees, the justification being that you’ve got to loose a few to save a lot. This still did not prepare me for the tearing destruction of a big tree falling to the ground. The tree in question was probably over 50m tall and was undoubtedly a small ecosystem of epiphytes, lianas, frogs, insects, mosses etc all in itself. Its only...