Research Background
I work as a park ranger in The Habitat Penang Hill to give visitors a great experience in the park. Some days I will be assigned to take visitors for a guided tour about the park. There is wildlife in the park such as monkeys i.e., long-tailed macaques and dusky langurs, birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates etc. I did my final year project during my university on long-tailed macaques on campus. This research helped me a lot during my work especially during guided tour and when visitors encountered macaques.
It was such a golden opportunity to join IPS this year as I would love to join an international conference for a long time. Due to financial issues, I missed quite a lot of great conferences. Thank you, Malaysian Primatological Society and The Habitat Foundation, for supporting me to attend IPS conference this time in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. It was eye-opening for me where I get to meet so many researchers and met new friends from all parts of the world. The conference this time was more about macaques and relating environmental education with primatology. It was fairly upset when one of the speakers mentioned the long-tailed macaque in Bangladesh was extinct in thew wild few years ago. There was a sentence I would highlight to the people I met at my workplace where most wildlife can be found is that “high abundance does not mean high density”, meaning you see that animal species plenty in that area, does not mean they are high in number in the whole world. I attended a workshop on ethnoprimatology, where they taught us how to conduct interview session with local communities. Only I realise how wrong and aggressive my approach back then and I asked most of the direct and leading questions towards interviewees. After this workshop, I made up a appropriate methods for interview in order to not leading interviewees to give me the answers I would want to have.
I would approach my university juniors to assist those who are interested in primate study and providing advice and connection to them. Meanwhile at my workplace, I would take the opportunity to educate and spread the awareness of the importance of coexistence between human and primates to the visitors that visited the park, especially during guided tours and of course to share what I learn from IPS this time to my fellow colleagues.
Our aim is to coordinate primate-related studies and conservation work in Malaysia and to create opportunities for capacity building of young Malaysians
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