The name says it plainly. In the Lun Bawang and Kelabit languages, Pulong Tau means "our forests." Not the government's forests, not a timber concession, not a line on a development map. When the indigenous communities of Sarawak's Kelabit Highlands began pushing for a national park in the 1970s, they chose a name that was both a description and a declaration. They had watched logging roads advance through Borneo's lowlands for decades, and they understood where those roads would eventually lead. The park they envisioned would stretch across 164,500 hectares of highland wilderness, encompassing Mount Murud -- at 2,424 meters, the highest peak in Sarawak -- the dramatic twin sandstone pillars of Batu Lawi, and the Tama Abu mountain range. It would protect the water catchment for six major rivers: the Baram, Belait, Limbang, Tutong, Trusan, and Padas. By the time the proclamation was finally passed in 2005, the park had been reduced to roughly 60,000 hectares, and neither Batu Lawi nor the area where Sumatran rhinoceros had been rediscovered was included. But the name held.
In 1986, during surveys to support the park proposal, biologists stumbled onto something that upended assumptions about Sarawak's wildlife: a population of eastern Sumatran rhinoceros. The species had been considered extinct in the state. Finding it alive in these highland forests changed the calculus of what the park needed to protect. During the same survey period, researchers documented the critical role of laurel forests in sustaining populations of Bornean bearded pigs, discovered Rafflesia flowers blooming at the base of Mount Murud, and confirmed that orangutans occasionally entered the area. A second, expanded proposal in 1987 argued that these discoveries demanded broader boundaries. The Sarawak cabinet had approved the original proposal between 1984 and 1987 but required the boundaries to be redrawn to avoid conflicts with areas designated for land development. Conservation and commerce negotiated across the same maps, and commerce held the larger pen.
Climb through Pulong Tau and the forest transforms around you. In the lower elevations, upper mixed dipterocarp forest dominates -- massive trees with buttress roots spreading across the forest floor like the flying arches of a cathedral. Higher up, the dipterocarps give way to oak-laurel forest, where the canopy lowers and the air cools. Higher still, heath forest appears, the stunted woodland that Sarawakians call kerangas, an Iban word meaning "land where rice cannot grow." At the highest elevations, mossy elfin forest takes over, every surface carpeted in dripping moss and rich in rhododendron species that bloom in pinks and whites against the perpetual green. The boundaries between these vegetation types blur and overlap, one forest becoming another in gradual transitions that a hiker notices only in hindsight. Orchids and Nepenthes pitcher plants appear throughout, their carnivorous traps glinting with captured rainwater.
A 1998 expedition by the Malaysian Nature Society cataloged the park's biodiversity with a thoroughness that revealed the highlands' global significance. The team recorded 67 bird species from 29 families, nearly a fifth of them endemic to Borneo. Mountain Imperial Pigeons sailed between ridgelines. Chestnut-crested Yuhinas foraged in noisy flocks through the elfin forest. On the exposed peaks of Mount Murud and Batu Lawi, specialized species held out: the Ochraceous Bulbul and the Mountain Blackeye, birds adapted to altitudes where most lowland species cannot survive. Twenty-eight mammal species were documented, twelve of them Bornean endemics. The Mountain Giant Rat and the Summit Rat -- rodents found only on Borneo's highest peaks -- shared the highlands with civets and other small carnivores. Eighteen frog species and four snake species rounded out the vertebrate count, including Wagler's Pit Viper, coiled and jade-green in the understory, and the Golden-legged Bush Frog, a species so specialized it inhabits only montane moss forest.
The Kelabit Highlands rest on some of the oldest rock in Borneo. Geologists believe the highlands developed from rifted continental crust where marine sediments accumulated before Borneo separated from the Eurasian mainland. The evidence is written in the stone: evaporite deposits and limestone speak of ancient shallow seas, while folding and faulting along a northeast-southwest axis record the tectonic forces that pushed these sediments skyward. Walk east across the highlands and the rock beneath your feet shifts from oxidized iron and coal-bearing sandstones to the mudstones and limestone of the central plateau, then to the grey sandstones of the Mount Murud region. Each transition marks a different chapter in the geological story, hundreds of millions of years compressed into a few days' hike. The rivers that Pulong Tau protects -- six major watersheds fanning outward from these highlands -- follow paths dictated by this ancient geology, cutting through faults and folding to reach the sea.
Located at 3.59N, 115.33E in the Kelabit Highlands of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Mount Murud (2,424m / 7,946ft), Sarawak's highest peak, is visible from a considerable distance in clear weather. Nearest airstrip is Bario Airport (BBN/WBGZ), a small STOL strip in the Kelabit Highlands. Ba Kelalan airstrip lies to the northwest. The terrain is mountainous with peaks exceeding 2,000m; maintain safe altitude. Cloud buildup over the highlands is common in the afternoon. The twin sandstone pillars of Batu Lawi, just outside the park boundary, serve as a prominent visual landmark.