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Geography

Covering an area of roughly 287,000 square miles, Borneo is the third-largest island in the world. It is divided into four political regions: Kalimantan belongs to Indonesia; Sabah and Sarawak are part of Malaysia; a small remaining region comprises the sultanate of Brunei. Located southeast of the Malay Peninsula and southwest of the Philippines, Borneo is primarily mountainous, with dense areas of rain forest. The highest peak in Borneo, Mt. Kinabalu, stands at 13,455 ft. With a generally hot, wet climate, rain is more common than not, with some portions of Borneo receiving between 150 and 200 inches of rainfall annually. Between October and March, monsoons buffet the island.

Given the abundance of rainfall, it makes sense that Borneo’s flora is among the most diverse in the world. Borneo has nearly 11,000 species of flowering plants, about a third of which are indigenous. How dense is the vegetation? In one 16 acre area of Borneo’s lowland forest, over 700 species of trees have been recorded. In comparison, there are only 171 native tree species in all of eastern North America.

History and People

For most of the last millennium, Borneo remained isolated from the rest of the world. Located further from Indian trade routes than other parts of the Malay Peninsula, Borneo was less often the destination of traders and immigrants. But in the 16th century, emissaries of Spain and Portugal reached Borneo’s shores. Soon after, the Dutch and British arrived, and it was these two latter nations that held power in Borneo from the 17th century into the modern era. In 1949, Indonesia became a foreign state, and in 1957, Malaysia gained its independence. Today, the population of Borneo consists of non-Muslim Dayaks and Islamic Malays, as well as Chinese and Europeans.

Inland, Borneo is comprised of a variety of different native tribes, each distinguishable from others by distinct language and culture. Before contact was made with the West, Borneo’s tribes often engaged in wars with one another. Still, the tribes shared a host of similarities, including dwellings, diet, and culture. Today, the Ibans are the largest indigenous group in East Malaysia.

Mt. Kinabalu

Northern Borneo’s Mt. Kinabalu stands 13,455 feet tall, and is the tallest mountain in South East Asia. One of the youngest mountains in the world, Kinabalu was born only a million years ago, when geological forces thrust this gigantic ridge of granite up through the softer surrounding rock.

Kinabalu boasts a stunning mixture of flora and fauna. Among the rich, diverse plant life are nearly 1,200 species of wild orchids, not to mention unusually plentiful numbers of Rhododendrons, pitcher plants, mosses, figs, and ferns. The most common animal found in the area around Kinabalu is the Mountain Treeshrew, a small, resourceful creature that eats fruits and insects.

In the rainy season, the slopes of Kinabalu transform into stirring displays of rivulets and waterfalls. As water pours off the mountain, it flows over layers of sandstone and limestone, carving out labyrinth-like caves deep beneath the ground.

Rainforest

While there are many types of forests on this Island in the Clouds, perhaps none is more unique to Borneo than the dipterocarp rainforest. The Latin name Dipterocarp, meaning "two winged seed," describes the fruit of these trees, which consist of a seed with two leafy wings. When winds blow a ripe seed off a dipterocarp, the wings act like the blades of a helicopter, allowing the seed to descend at a distance from the parent tree, and begin a life of its own.

Dipterocarp forests can reach heights of over 200 feet. Beneath their lofty branches, one finds a burgeoning world of living things.

In the forest canopy, Borneo’s great ape, the orangutan, continues its ongoing struggle to survive. Found only on Borneo and neighboring Sumatra, only 20,000 orangutans are left in the wild, down at least 30 percent from a decade ago. Logging, cultivation and forest fires have decimated their natural habitat, and now less than half of Borneo’s virgin rainforest remains.

"Orang-utan" means "forest person," which is unsurprising when one considers the remarkably humanlike qualities of these creatures. But they are animals of the forest, and have developed a host of specialized skills for living in the treetops. They are incredibly agile, with a strong grip and surprising coordination. And unlike other primates, orangutans build nests. They do this for two main reasons. First, to avoid sleeping on the ground, where they can be assailed by insects and other creatures. And second, because they lack a tail, and their size can make them unstable when they fall asleep in trees. It is not uncommon for young orangs to fall from their nests a few times before they master tree sleeping.

Orangutans are only one of the rainforest’s numerous inhabitants. During the day, massive animals like Asian elephants and Sumatran rhinos can be found journeying through the undergrowth. Elephants are not indigenous; most experts believe that they were introduced to Borneo by humans. The Sumatran rhino, on the other hand, is a native, though there are so few rhinos remaining that until recently, they were believed extinct.

With the arrival of night, spiny-tailed porcupines, mousedeer, and fish owls emerge from their diurnal hiding places, searching for food. No nocturnal creature is more unusual than the flying squirrel. Flaps of skin stretch between the squirrel’s front and rear legs, and when the squirrel leaps from a tree, it glides on its skin membranes, sometimes for distances of more than 300 feet.

Seashore and Reefs  

Borneo’s extraordinary abundance of life doesn’t end at the limits of the land. Just beyond its shoreline lies the frontier of another world as rich and complex as anything on the surface. Borneo’s reefs lie where the Indian and Pacific Oceans overlap, making its waters the meeting point for a mass of marine life.

These reefs have been called the rainforests of the sea. They are blessed with a huge variety of corals, which support a wealth of micro-organisms and a hierarchy of fish to feed on them. But all of this abundance attracts attention. The reef is a magnet for predators, and ocean-going hunters like the barracuda are drawn to the reefs in a large numbers.

Other visitors return to the reefs on the last leg of a long migration. After 25 years away, sea turtles return to the island of their birth. Now ready to breed, they may have covered thousands of miles of ocean to reach the reef just below the beach where they were born. Females swim to the reefs, where males are waiting, and when the time is right, each female will move off to join a mate.

Several times during each breeding season, female turtles journey onto a sandy beach and lay their eggs -- an average of 85 on each occasion. Sometime later, the eggs hatch, and the baby turtles immediately enter the ocean. Out of every hundred hatchlings, only one will live long enough to reach breeding age.

Sea turtles are among Borneo’s many endangered species. Turtle eggs are a delicacy, and often fetch a hefty sum at market. As a result, egg collecting has become increasingly frequent. Though it’s difficult to say exactly how the harvesting is affecting the turtles, turtle populations have been declining for many years. Additionally, hundreds of adult turtles are killed each year by fishing ships and by dumped garbage such as plastic bags, which turtles can mistake for jellyfish. Although conservation efforts are underway to help the sea turtles, they continue to struggle for survival as a species.

Closeup: Indonesia

Area: 736,000 sq. miles (roughly three times the size of Texas)
Capital: Jakarta, population approx. 8.8 million
Ethnic groups: Javanese, 45%, Sundanese 14%, Madurese 7.5%, coastal Malays 7.5%, others 26%
Religions: Islam, Protestanism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism
Life expectancy at birth: Men, 60 years, Women, 64 years.
Gained independence: August 17, 1945

Closeup: Malaysia

Area: 127,316 sq. miles (slightly larger than New Mexico)
Capital: Kuala Lumpur
Ethnic groups: Malay 47%, Chinese 25%, Indigenous 11%, Indian 7%, non-Malaysian citizens 7%, others 3%
Religions: Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Christianity, Baha’i
Life expectancy: Female, 74 years; Male, 69 years
Gained independence: August 31, 1957

Sarawak

Sarawak is the most multi-racial state in Malaysia with over 24 distinct ethnic groups; the major groups are the Ibans, Chinese, Bidayuh, Malays, Melanau and the Orang Ulu. The current population of Sarawak is 2 million and covers an area of 125,000 sq. km.

Once part of the Sultanate of Brunei, Sarawak has a romantic history where an English family ruled as Rajahs for over 100 years. It was ceded by the 3rd and last Rajah in 1946 to the British Crown and in 1963 it became part of the Federation of Malaysia. The state capital is Kuching with a population of 500,000.

Sabah

The modern history of Sabah began in 1881 when the British North Borneo Company leased it from the Sultan of Sulu. Known as British North Borneo, the name reverted to Sabah upon the formation of the Federation of Malaysia in 1963.

Also with a diverse group of people, the majority of which are the Kadazan/Dusun it covers an area of 74,000 sq km with a population of 2 million. The state capital is Kota Kinabalu with a population of 500,000.