When I, Erik Meijaard, worked as a wildlife consultant for a timber concession in Borneo, I often chatted with the logging truck drivers — and quickly realised that some of them knew far more about local wildlife populations than the company’s own biodiversity teams.
“If you want to see clouded leopards, ride with me in my truck — I can almost guarantee we’ll spot one or two near kilometre 38 around two in the morning,” one of the drivers told me at the time.
I didn’t spot the elusive cats that night, but two years later, early one morning, I finally found one sitting calmly beside a logging road. The driver had been right all along: these leopards really do like the roads.
