Lucy Peter Liew, Malaysia

[#1]

Navigation:  2017 Scholar Project  2017Conference   ReferenceProject   CommunitiesPage   ConservationGIS  Scgis.org      

Lucy Peter Liew (EFN), Danau Girang Field Centre, Malaysia 

xPark xMammal xElephant xWildlife xEducation xTracking  X2017Scholar  x2017Talk  xTalk  xScholar xMalaysia  xAsia

*-Organization name: Danau Girang Field Centre

*-Organization full street address (in your local format): C/O Sabah Wildlife Department, Wisma Muis, 5th Floor, Block B, 88100, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.
*-Organization full mailing address, if different:N/A
*-Country: Malaysia
*-Work phone with country and area code:- +6088215353
*-Work fax with country and area code:- +6088222476
*-Main email:- goossensbr@cardiff.ac.uk
*-Scholar Email: ngelz83@gmail.com
*-Organization Web site URL if any: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/danau-girang-field-centre, https://www.facebook.com/Danau-Girang-Field-Centre

*-ORGANIZATION’S WORK: Established in 2008, Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) is a collaborative training and research centre managed by Cardiff University, United Kingdom and Sabah Wildlife Department, Malaysia, situated in the Malaysian state of Sabah within the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary (LKWS). DGFC’s mission is to further scientific research with the aim of contributing to Through the utilisation of advanced technologies such as camera traps, GPS collars, and drones, DGFC explores the survival mechanisms employed by multiple flagship species with the aim to develop species actions plans and landscape management guidelines for fragmented lowland tropical forest within Sabah.

*-ROLE IN THE ORGANIZATION:
I have been attached with Danau Girang Field Centre (DGFC) for five years as a Spatial Conservation Planning Officer. My main role is to assist DGFC as well as Sabah Wildlife Department in GIS to aid in the conservation of wildlife and their habitat. My job includes managing, analyzing and mapping wildlife data such as their distribution, habitat use and preferences and changes in their habitats. 
Some examples of projects that I was/am currently involved include;
 ---The Kinabatangan Conservation Corridor Project: Designing Living Landscape for Conservation in Sabah - -This project aimed in undertaking a comprehensive landscape-level assessment, using a spatial prioritisation approach producing initial land-use plan for targeted decision makers. My main tasks in this project were collecting data through a one-month field work within areas of the lower Kinabatangan, data acquiring through government agencies and private sectors, GIS works (e.g digitizing data from satellite images, etc) and analyzing (animal distribution such as elephants, wild boar, etc through MaXent).
 ---The Infectious Disease Emergence and Economics of Altered Landscapes (IDEEAL) Program - This program investigates how human activities like deforestation contribute to disease spread and emergence within Sabah and aimed to understand the benefits of keeping intact forests to regulate diseases and to estimate the economic costs that are avoided by reducing deforestation. My role in this program is to assist the team in terms of GIS data preparation/acquisition. 
 ---B-CoNNECTED (Borneo Connectivity Network in Elephant Changing Habitat from Movement Data) this project aims to identify connectivity corridors to insure elephant migration while minimizing human-elephant conflicts. My main duties in this project are to assist the team in terms of preparing the elephants’ movement data and GIS data as well as conducting surveys.
 ---Environmental Impact Assessment for the Proposed Aquaculture Project in Pitas, Sabah - In this project, my team was given a task to carry out wildlife surveys through camera trapping, direct sightings/auditory as well as surveying the existing vegetation and environment through drone within the proposed project area and eventually produce maps that showed the distribution of the existing wildlife and vegetation of the area.
In addition to the projects above, I am also involved in activities in relation to human elephant conflict by Sabah Wildlife Department, inwhich I assist the department in data collection as well as in GIS (e.g preparing the elephants movement map on weekly basis).

History of your personal work in conservation and GIS: I was indirectly involved with conservation when I first started working in an environmental consultant company, Integrated Environmental Consultant (IEC) in which I hold a position as an environmental executive focusing on writing environmental impact assessment reports and also handling the GIS works (e.g data management, digitizing, simple analysis, etc). My first project which had me indirectly involved with conservation was the KCOL (Kinabatangan Corridor of Life) project by WWF. This project aimed to establish a balance between the growing demands of private land development (such as forest conversion), the local community and the need to protect its unique wildlife. My role in this particular project focused more on the GIS part in which I was asked to collect data from related stakeholders as well as doing aerial surveys and doing a lot of digitizing from the acquired data to produce a comprehensive land use and land cover maps of the Kinabatangan area. This is when I was first exposed to GIS technologies and my knowledge and skill had gradually improved and developed through the mentorship of my former employer who is a biologist and a GIS professional. I was attached with IEC for three years before I moved to another environmental consultancy. Though my former job as an environmental executive focused mainly on writing environmental impact assessment (EIA) reports, my knowledge in GIS had helped me tremendously to better understand and assess in terms of the environmental impacts of projects. My passion towards GIS and conservation grew ever since and I learnt by myself to understand GIS technologies more and to developed the knowledge and skill that I had already acquired from my former mentor. I finally had an opportunity to join DGFC, my current organization, in 2011, as spatial conservation planning officer in which my main duty focuses mainly on GIS. Ever since then, I have actively been involved with conservation works and projects. I am also currently involved with an ongoing research that focuses on the green turtle conservation in Pangumbahan beach, west Java, Indonesia in which I was given tasks to do a number of analysis using the ArcGIS software. The research aims to determine the most suitable nesting sites for the green turtle and consequently to evaluate the current existing marine zoning system of Pangumbahan coastal area. I am an environmental engineer by background who is passionate about saving mother nature and the wildlife, and though I do not have much understandings and knowledge in many aspects of conservation (e.g. the biological understanding of certain species, etc) I am hoping to contribute more using my GIS knowledge and skills, which is what exactly I am doing currently.

What is most challenging about the conservation/GIS work that you do: Most of the conservation and GIS works that I am currently involved are located within the Kinabatangan region, specifically the Lower Kinabatangan which is situated in eastern Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. It is a floodplain area with tropical forests harbouring an amazing biological diversity and endemism which support a variety of wildlife population such as the Bornean elephant, Bornean orang-utan, proboscis monkey, etc. In addition to this, the Kinabatangan floodplain is composed of a variety of habitat types including riverine, limestone forest, mangrove and other microhabitats. This makes the Lower Kinabatangan one of the last conservation stronghold for much of the wildlife in Sabah and a highly significant site for biodiversity conservation. However, these habitats are threatened by the increasing number of development activities and oil palm plantation expansion causing habitat fragmentation that impact the existing wildlife there, and cause a great degree of conflicts with humans. Much of the work that I am involved with, directly and indirectly, includes looking at the movement and the distribution of species and how their movements are correlated to the existing land use and habitat type within the floodplain. Some of the challenges that I faced in my GIS work include accessing reliable up to date data sources of environmental data (e.g vegetation types, land use, demographic), also challenges which involve GIS technologies, in which my knowledge and skill are quite limited in terms of doing data analysis and interpreting the results. Also, the most difficult part in my conservation work consists of solving the current existing issues particularly in relation to conflicts among the human population, developments and the wildlife, how they can co-exist.

*-Title of the paper you will present: Understanding the Home Range and Habitat Type used by the Bornean Elephant in the North Kinabatangan Managed Range

*-Abstract/summary of the paper you will present: Background: Home range can be defined as an area over which an animal or group of animals regularly travels in search of food or mates, and that may overlap with those of neighboring animals or groups of the same species. Studies have shown that for African and Indian elephants the size of home range is determined by numerous factors including water availability, food sources, seasonal changes, habitat loss and existence of man-made barriers. In Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, the Bornean elephants occur mainly in the south, center and east of the state. The most current and reliable estimation of the Bornean elephant population in Sabah is around 2,040 individuals. Currently, the Bornean elephants are under threat of population decline. The primary threats to these elephants are mainly due to habitat loss and human-elephant conflict. This project focuses on understanding the home range and habitat type used by the elephants specifically in the North Kinabatangan Managed Range (where human-elephant conflicts have recently increased) and aims to analyze the home range and habitat type preferences using Geographic Information System (GIS).
Objectives: 
1. To determine the home range of the elephants in the North Kinabatangan Managed Range.
2. To determine the habitat types used by the elephants.
Methodology: Size of the elephants’ home range will be determined using location data gathered from a satellite tracking system and will be analyzed using the kernel density estimator (KDE) method. The output of this analysis will be overlapped with the land cover generated from satellite images and topographical maps to determine the type of habitat preferred by the elephants.
Expected Results: The expected outcomes of this analysis are that the home range and the type of habitat preferred by elephants in the North Kinabatangan Managed Range are determined.