Qualla: The Unmapped Heart of Borneo

The Unmapped Heart of Borneo: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit irafina, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2003, a camera trap in the mountains of North Kalimantan captured something no scientist could identify: a dark red, cat-sized carnivore with a long bushy tail, moving through the forest at night. WWF announced the images in 2005, and the animal made headlines worldwide as possibly the first new Bornean carnivore discovered in over a century. The photographs came from deep inside Kayan Mentarang National Park, a wilderness so vast and so little explored that an entirely unknown predator had been living there undetected. At 1.36 million hectares, Kayan Mentarang is the largest stretch of protected rainforest remaining on Borneo. Straddling the border between Indonesian Kalimantan and Malaysian Sarawak, the park blankets a highland plateau where the Mentarang mountain trails wind from the Datadian region in the south through Apau Ping and up to Long Bawan in the north. It is a place defined by what has not happened to it: the logging roads, the palm oil plantations, the highways that have transformed so much of the island have never reached here.

Image: irafina | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Unmapped Heart of Borneo: A Catalog of the Rare and the Secretive

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sadalmelik, CC BY-SA 3.0. The species list reads like a field guide to Borneo's most elusive inhabitants. Clouded leopards patrol territories that can stretch across dozens of square kilometers, their cloud-patterned coats dissolving into the dappled light of the understory. Proboscis monkeys, with their ...

Image: Sadalmelik | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Unmapped Heart of Borneo: The Dayak Heartland

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ESCapade, CC BY-SA 3.0. Between 20,000 and 25,000 Dayak people live in and around the park, members of the Kenyah, Murut, Punan, Lundayeh, and Lun Bawang communities. Archaeological remains, including stone tools and graves scattered through the highlands, confirm that people have inhabited this landsca...

Image: ESCapade | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Unmapped Heart of Borneo: Borneo's Transboundary Lifeline

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit irafina, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kayan Mentarang sits at the center of the Heart of Borneo initiative, a conservation effort led by WWF that spans the borders of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The logic is geographic: the highland forests that the park protects do not stop at national boundaries. Watersheds fe...

Image: irafina | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Unmapped Heart of Borneo: Where the Canopy Holds

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ESCapade, CC BY-SA 3.0. Borneo has lost more than half its forest cover since the 1970s. Oil palm plantations, industrial logging, and road construction have fragmented the island's wilderness into shrinking patches. Against this backdrop, Kayan Mentarang's scale is staggering. The park contains both lo...

Image: ESCapade | CC BY-SA 3.0