Endangered Bornean Clouded Leopard Facing Habitat Loss

Bandar Seri Begawan - A Recent sighting of the endangered Bornean Clouded Leopard during daylight in a populated neighbourhood in Labi showed that the nocturnal wild-cat species are disturbed and facing habitat loss, a wildlife expert said yesterday.


One of the most elusive animals in the world, the Clouded Leopard inhabits dense forests.

But on October 31 this year, a local man managed to capture a photo of the clouded leopard, scientifically known as Neofelis diardi, behind his old house on Jalan Labi Lama in Mukim Labi, in Belait District.

Dr Joseph Charles, a senior lecturer at Universiti Brunei Darussalam's (UBD) Biology Department and project leader of a faunal biodiversity survey in the forests of Sg Ingei in Belait, commented that the surrounding of the house where the picture was taken was of secondary forest.

"You see in the picture, the cat was walking on a fallen tree trunk, surrounded by bushes and further up there is a forest, so when it comes down there (closer to a neighbour-hood), it's because the forest is gone," he explained to The Brunei Times.

He added: "This animal is nocturnal, if they come down to the place (a neighbourhood), either it's hungry, couldn't sleep anywhere in peace (or) is very disturbed."

Sharing his sighting with the paper, Adi Aizal said he and his family were cleaning up the old house which belong to the family when he saw the leopard climbed down a tree.

"We were at the back of the old family house, clearing and cleaning up when I realised there were some noise and movements up in the trees," said the 34-year-old.

"When it came down, the tail was as long as its body, so it was actually very surreal to me, as I've never seen a cat as big as this before," said Adi, who never knew the existence of the leopard before die sighting.

He then ran to his car to get his camera and took a picture of the cat.


"It looked dazed, as if it just woke up. It was looking at us for a good one or two minutes, then walked away," said the Kuala Belait native who is a helicopter pilot with Bristow Helicopters International operating in Libya.

After the sighting, he searched for information of the leopard on the Internet and contacted an administration member of the Sg Ingei project to inform them about his sighting.

Dr Charles had earlier said that a team would come back to the location of the sighting in January next year to set up camera traps and collect data of the animal.

Deforestation in the tropical regions of Southeast Asia is the most serious threat to the clouded leopard.

The species natural habitat has been fragmented and decreasing at a rate of 10 per cent a year since 1997, according to an information on the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) website. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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