Quantifying species richness and composition of elusive rainforest mammals in Taman Negara National Park, Peninsular Malaysia

Rapid urban and agricultural expansions are taking place across Peninsular Malaysia resulting in wide spread forest conversion impacting on important conservation areas. Taman Negara National Park is one of the few protected nature reserves remaining largely intact from such anthropogenic threats. In this study we aimed to quantify species richness, and relative abundance and composition of native mammals in lowland and highland forest in Taman Negara National Park. We deployed cameras at 216 sampling plots in the study areas for 14,776 and 6935 trap nights in lowland and highland forest respectively. Our results show that lowland and highland forest have similar species richness, while highland forest has higher mammal abundance, which is likely to be caused by anthropogenic pressures on lowland forest adversely affecting mammal populations. Both forest types have similar mammal species composition. The mammal community includes most of the rare and endangered species in the region, including Malayan pangolin, Asian elephant, tiger, dhole, large-spotted civet, and Asian tapir. The region of the national park that was less likely to be vulnerable to logging, human settlement, agricultural expansion, and poaching (i.e. the Terengganu's sector), had higher mammal species richness, while the Pahang's sector had lower species richness. Mammal species richness increased with proximity to the park boundary and distance from the nearest river but decreased with the increasing number of intruders. This has important implications for management of the edges of protected nature reserves. In the coming decades, the pristine nature of Taman Negara National Park will become highly threatened if anthropogenic activities inside and outside the park are not monitored. It is vital that the responsible agencies tackle these threats through aggressive enforcement and the creation of a robust framework to monitor any land developments that take place in the vicinity of Taman Negara National Park