Back to the jungle – retrieving camera trap footage

Rainforest Camp

Our Wildlife Monitoring Project team is back in the jungle! After leaving our carefully positioned camera traps deep in the Khao Sok rainforest for a couple of months, our fearless team took a boat to Elephant Hills Rainforest Camp. Already from the pier we noticed that the water level at this manmade lake was a couple of meters higher than during our previous visit. Our amazing floating luxury tented camp in the heart of Khao Sok and Cheow Larn Lake was once again our base camp for the great expedition.

The wetter the better

We are currently in the monsoon season here in Thailand, and especially Khao Sok is known as one of the wettest areas in the country. We truly appreciate this season, as it enables one of the world’s oldest rainforests to remain healthy, lush and green. When entering the forest, we heard the sound of water flowing in the Bang Chong waterfall. It’s located quite a distance from the lake bank, so this is pretty unusual, unless there are exceptionally large amounts of water running through. Soon we noticed, that some parts of the trail were flooding, and therefore needed to find alternative routes to reach all the cameras.

Elephant footprints

Despite the mud and flooding, we were able to spot several kinds of wildlife footprints along the way. Most of them belonged to gaurs and wild elephants, so we had high hopes of seeing them in the new footage. Unfortunately, our attempts making plaster casts weren’t very successful this time, most likely due to the wet condition of the corridors. The paths were surprisingly open and clear this time, which further increased our hopes of getting some great and clear footage of the wildlife passing by our camera traps.

Wild elephant footprints

Mouse deer footprints

Unidentified cat species

Farewell, camera no. 10

We replaced batteries and memory cards, adjusted position and tested all cameras. We did our best to ensure that they are ready and will not miss any wildlife roaming in some of the deepest parts of the forest. Sometimes, however, even our best efforts can’t help, as we came to notice with a camera no. 10 that was placed in front of a large cave, often frequented by wildlife. We lost yet another motion triggered camera, and we will leave it for you to judge if it can be repaired, based on the below picture. You guessed it – a wild elephant is the most likely suspect in this case too!

Luckily most of our cameras were spared from wildlife attacks, so stay tuned for the fascinating footage from Khao Sok rainforest!

Learn more about our Wildlife Monitoring Project here. By gathering information on the flora and fauna in Khao Sok, we believe we can help the National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries with their continuous efforts on preserving this unique area. We are currently looking for partners to co-operate with our Wildlife Monitoring Project. If you or your company would be interested, please contact us at projects@elephanthills.com.

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