The wallow is carved into the side of the hill. It looks almost as if a digger has been parked in the understorey for too long, leaving a muddy indentation in its wake.
Usually, I would walk straight past it. Today, deep in Danum’s fairy-tale forests of towering dipterocarps, corkscrewing lianas and moss-covered logs, Osou, one of the rangers, stops and scans for footprints.
“It’s bearded pig,” Osou says.
Pig wallows are peppered throughout the forest and it’s not uncommon to spot the large, swaying balls of a male as it vanishes into the understory.
But then Osou says something that changes everything.
“Is used by bearded pig now. But wallow made by rhino.”
Immediately, I am a man with a thousand questions. The Bornean rhino is a distinct subspecies of the critically endangered Sumatran rhino. It vies for the tragic position of being one of the rarest mammals on earth.
The last time evidence of a rhino was found in Danum Valley, a storm of conservation charities descended on its forests. Soon after, a female, Iman, was captured near a river and helicoptered over to a sanctuary in Tabin Wildlife Reserve. There, conservationists hoped she would contribute to a last-ditch captive breeding effort to save the subspecies.
That was in March 2014, two years before my first ever visit to Danum. I remember reading about Iman’s capture at the time and later being overwhelmed with excitement when I found out that I would soon be heading into possible rhino territory.
But when I ask Osou if he thinks a rhino could still be lingering in the conservation area, I get a familiar wistful smile. It’s the same smile I’ve come to expect whenever I ask Danum staff about the possibility of rhino in the reserve, or its surrounding forests.
“No more rhino in Danum,” Osou says. “This is old wallow.”
His answer doesn’t come as a shock. Only a few weeks before, Tam, possibly the last living male of the subspecies had died in captivity. Sabah declared its wild rhinos extinct in 2015. But it’s a bitter pill to swallow all the same.
Osou says that this wallow was carved by Iman some years back and that she was captured not far from where we’re standing.
For somebody who was willing to entertain just moments before that there could still be a species of megafauna frolicking undetected through Danum’s intensively surveyed forests, I am suddenly rather sceptical.
“How can you tell it’s an old rhino wallow, and not just made by a pig?” I ask.
It quickly becomes apparent, though, that I am talking to a man that knows a thing or two about Bornean rhinos.
Osou reveals that he was part of the team that found the footprints and wallow that eventually led to Iman’s capture. He was there too when she was caught in a trap made by suspending wooden boards over a hole in the ground, and covering it in soil.
As for differentiating a rhino from a pig wallow—easy.
“Rhino bigger. Rhino make bigger wallow”.
I stand in the dried-out wallow and my heart suddenly feels very heavy. In the aftermath of Tam’s death, I had gone to visit an unused rhino enclosure nearby, thinking back then that it was probably the closest I would ever come to a wild rhino on Borneo.
But here is a pit actually used by a wild rhino. Carved and enlarged by one out of a forested hill. Here’s a spot where Iman would have wriggled and squirmed, enjoying the cool sensation of the mud on her hairy skin. Where she would have bathed to remove ectoparasites. Where she would have rested—maybe for as long as five hours a day.
And if the Bornean subspecies slips into extinction over the coming years, here is a muddy pit that could outlive an animal with 300,000 years of genetic uniqueness, that has roamed the earth since the Pleistocene.
We end the day setting camera traps near other wallows dotted throughout the forest. Because you just never know.
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