Present Status of the Large Mammals in the Kutai National Park, After a Large Scale Fire in East Kalimantan, Indonesia

The forest of the Kutai National Park in East Kalimantan, Indonesia was burned by a large scale wild fires in 1982-1983. Just after the fire, Wirawan (1985) made a check list of mammals and reported that the existence of pockets of forest that were not affected by the fire and the survivals of some mammals in the area. A brief survey on large mammals was conducted in the same study area of Wirawan (1985) from August to September, 1986 by the methods of direct observation and animal traces count. The fauna of larger mammals was not so clear changes from the result of Wirawan (1984). Large mammals might change their life to the new circumstances by their potential ability of adaptation to the environmental alternations. Consequently, the population of large herbivore mammals in the present study area might increase their numbers in the primary and secondary forest those were developed after the fire rather than in the pockets of primary forest those were not affected by the fire. However, the some arboreal species had lost their large scales of the habitat after the fire. They might be survived in the limited pockets of unburned forest. The recovery of such animal populations seemed to be inferior to the terrestrial ones