Qualla: Our Forests, Our Name

Our Forests, Our Name: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The name says it plainly. In the Lun Bawang and Kelabit languages, Pulong Tau means "our forests." Not the government's forests, not a timber concession, not a line on a development map. When the indigenous communities of Sarawak's Kelabit Highlands began pushing for a national park in the 1970s, they chose a name that was both a description and a declaration. They had watched logging roads advance through Borneo's lowlands for decades, and they understood where those roads would eventually lead. The park they envisioned would stretch across 164,500 hectares of highland wilderness, encompassing Mount Murud -- at 2,424 meters, the highest peak in Sarawak -- the dramatic twin sandstone pillars of Batu Lawi, and the Tama Abu mountain range. It would protect the water catchment for six major rivers: the Baram, Belait, Limbang, Tutong, Trusan, and Padas. By the time the proclamation was finally passed in 2005, the park had been reduced to roughly 60,000 hectares, and neither Batu Lawi nor the area where Sumatran rhinoceros had been rediscovered was included. But the name held.

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Our Forests, Our Name: A Rhinoceros Nobody Expected

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1986, during surveys to support the park proposal, biologists stumbled onto something that upended assumptions about Sarawak's wildlife: a population of eastern Sumatran rhinoceros. The species had been considered extinct in the state. Finding it alive in these highland forest...

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Our Forests, Our Name: Forests That Change with Every Step Upward

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Climb through Pulong Tau and the forest transforms around you. In the lower elevations, upper mixed dipterocarp forest dominates -- massive trees with buttress roots spreading across the forest floor like the flying arches of a cathedral. Higher up, the dipterocarps give way to o...

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Our Forests, Our Name: Wings and Scales of the Highlands

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A 1998 expedition by the Malaysian Nature Society cataloged the park's biodiversity with a thoroughness that revealed the highlands' global significance. The team recorded 67 bird species from 29 families, nearly a fifth of them endemic to Borneo. Mountain Imperial Pigeons sailed...

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Our Forests, Our Name: The Geology Beneath the Green

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Kelabit Highlands rest on some of the oldest rock in Borneo. Geologists believe the highlands developed from rifted continental crust where marine sediments accumulated before Borneo separated from the Eurasian mainland. The evidence is written in the stone: evaporite deposit...

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