I don’t have time to take photos using a good camera because there’s an eagle around that keeps trying to attack me.
- Unding Jami
The Yellow Meranti stands 89.5m tall in an area of forest known as ‘Sabah’s Lost World’ – the Maliau Basin Conservation Area, one of Malaysia’s last few untouched wildernesses. Its height places it ahead of the previous record-holder, an 88.3m Yellow Meranti in the Tawau Hills National Park.
The giant tree was discovered during reconnaissance flights by conservation scientists from the University of Cambridge working with the Sabah Forestry Department to help protect the area’s biodiversity. It comes at a crucial time, as the Sabah government takes measures to protect and restore heavily logged areas in the region.
Measuring a tree’s exact height is tricky when the tree is quite possibly the tallest tree in the Tropics. The only way is to climb it, and to take a tape measure with you. This is precisely what Unding Jami, an expert tree-climber from Sabah, did recently. When he reached the top, he confirmed the tree’s height and texted “I don’t have time to take photos using a good camera because there’s an eagle around that keeps trying to attack me and also lots of bees flying around.”
The tree actually stands on a slope: downhill it’s 91m tall, and uphill it’s around 88m tall. “We’d put it at 89.5m on average,” explains lead researcher Dr David Coomes, from Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences. “It’s a smidgen taller than the record, which makes it quite probably the tallest tree recorded in the Tropics!”
At this height, the tree is roughly equivalent to the height of 65 people standing on each other’s shoulders, or 20 double-decker London buses. It’s just a few metres short of London’s Big Ben.
Watch a video and read the full story
Image: The base of the tree
Credit: Stephanie Law
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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