From the Eco Warriors 23.03.2024
Borneo Wildlife Ambassador Program
Rafflesia: Giants of the forest floor
An Introduction to Birding
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On the 6th of March 2024, my parents and I attended a talk about Rafflesia and Birding at UTAN Restaurant in Putatan, Kota
Kinabalu, Sabah. The talk programme commenced at 4pm and it began with introducing Ms Serena Lamb as the first speaker. She began her talk by explaining the Rafflesia of Sabah by using slides. As she explained, there are many species of Rafflesia in the world.
Further, she also explained the life cycle of a Rafflesia. I learned that the Rafflesia begins its life cycle through finding host plants/vines and the seed starts to swell. This process takes around 61 days. Then, for 160 days the hot surface of the Rafflesia appears. Thereafter, the Rafflesia is pulled out of the bract. The Rafflesia seed then begins to bloom for 24-48 hours. The bloom will only last for 4-8 days. After that, it will ripen and produce spores. The final stage of the Rafflesia will be the germination of the host’s tissue which takes 46 months.
The following speaker is called Ron Pudin, he gave an introduction to birding by asking us a few questions such as “What is
birding?”, “Who is a birdwatcher?” and “Is chicken a bird?” Then, he proceeded to answer these questions. In Borneo, there are more than 688 species of birds recorded. Only 66 species or more are endemics of Sabah. Among these 66 species, only 6 are explained to us. They were the Black Crowned Pita, the Bornean Black-Capped Babbler, the Sabah Partridge, the Kinabalu Friendly Warbler and the White-Fronted Falconet. Finally, our programme ended with a man making a bird house for a hornbill and a little refreshment for the attendees.
Eco-Committee meeting
On 19th of March, the third Eco-Committee meeting of the academic year took place. Our main topics for the meeting were Food Waste and Earth Week. For food waste, we are still in the process of discussing how to fund the composter that we are trying to lease from MAEKO to put our food waste in school to a good use. We are also currently planning the events of Earth Week where everyday will have a different theme. On Friday during Earth Week, we have also discussed with the canteen owner, Chris and considered doing a buffet where students can choose the right amount of rice and vegetables for themselves. This was due to the problems that were found out by surveys that were taken by Early Years parents and primary parents where parents were talking about the food size and sauces on the food. We gathered a large amount of ideas for other Earth Week events as well such as craft events to reduce plastic waste before leaving.
