Gunung Palung National Park, Borneo, Indonesia Photograph by Daniel Gavin   Southeastern Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei Tropical and Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests   26,100 square miles (67,500 square kilometers) -- about the size of West Virginia and Delaware combined Critical/Endangered

· Wonders of the Peat Swamp
· Special Features
· Did You Know?
· Wild Side
· Cause for Concern
· More Photos

Wonders of the Peat Swamp

Venture behind coastal mangrove forests and around certain lakes in Borneo, the Malaysian state of Sarawak, and Indonesian Kalimantan, and you may encounter a fascinating habitat known as peat swamp forests. Though not as species-rich as nearby lowland forests, these regions are home to many interesting animals, including gibbons, orangutans, and crocodiles. They're also the primary habitat of the proboscis monkey, which lives only in Borneo.

Special Features

As rivers drain into the ocean, the sediment they carry can be trapped behind coastal mangrove trees. Over time, the sediment accumulates into domes that are rarely flooded. Organic matter then begins to build up on these domes, and though low in nutrients and high in acid, these soils then begin to support trees. In some places, peat swamp forests also form around lakes. Two large peat swamp forests occur in this ecoregion around Lake Mahakam and Lake Kapuas.

	The Borneo Peat Swamp Forests are home to one of the world's most desirable aquarium fish, the arowana.

Wild Side

You may be able to spy proboscis monkeys in the Borneo Peat Swamp Forests. They often gather along the rivers in the late afternoon and sleep in the tall lookout trees growing nearby. Proboscis monkeys feed exclusively on leaves and hard, starchy fruit. Long-tailed macaques, another kind of monkey, also hang out here, usually in fruit trees that grow along rivers in peat swamp forests. Other denizens of the river region include otters, waterbirds, crocodiles, and monitor lizards. Throughout the ecoregion as a whole, you'll find more than 30 species of palms, including the red-stemmed sealing wax palm. One species of bat and two species of birds--the Javan white-eye and the hooked-billed bulbul--live in this region and only a few other places.

Cause for Concern

Much of this region is threatened by logging and by fires that are set to clear forest for commercial agriculture, such as oil palm plantations. During the 1997-1998 drought season, these fires resulted in the death of many birds, reptiles, amphibians, primates, and other mammals. Hundreds of orangutans that fled into villages to escape the fire were killed by villagers for food, and their orphaned babies were sold to the international pet trade.

For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report.