PhD student first Malaysian to get UK award for hornbill research

HUTAN workers attaching the artificial nest box to a tree in Kinabatangan, Sandakan in Sabah. These nest boxes, equipped with camera traps and data loggers, are to protect endangered hornbills from poachers. — Photos: Sanjitpaal Singh/jitspics.com

THE floor of the dense forest off the Kinabatangan River in Sabah is the playground for Ravinder Kaur, who maps her grid in search of natural cavities for hornbills among the thickets of the big trees.

She eats, sleeps and breathes hornbills, and for good reason too, as she and her team have just been honoured with the 2017 Future Conservationist Award by UK-based Conservation Leadership Programme, the only Malaysian to receive the award for 2017.