The Team

About Us

Bird Malaysia’s team consist of specialist guides of the Malaysian Nature Society (Birdlife International), with intimate local knowledge of the rich habitat of East and West Malaysia birds. With a collective birding experience of over 20 years, the team is well-respected in the Malaysian birding circle, and have been honoured and respected by organizations and peers alike.

The team consist of Irshad Mobarak, Guna Segaran, Selvam Rahman and Hymeir Kamaruddin.

Irshad Mobarak

Irshad arrived in Langkawi 17 years ago, fell in love with its natural beauty and came to realize that nature conservation was his true calling. He is involved in a weekly local radio show, also assisting and appearing in several television documentaries including for the National Geographic Society (titled Hutan: Mysteries of the Malaysian Rainforest). The most recent, a short documentary-ad, which was aired on The Discovery Channel (titled The Wedding Ceremony of the White Bellied Sea Eagle). He also attended a short private course in taxonomy, and museum curation at the British Museum (Natural History) under the tutelage of the world-famous Lepidopterist, Bernard d’Abrera.

Irshad is currently resident naturalist for The Datai and Andaman Hotels where he conducts regular interpretive morning and evening walks. His walks are informative and entertaining.

"What I hope to achieve on my walks is to show to people that the forest is a living community of interactive and interdependent relationships. If we can instill in the hearts of people the wonders of the natural world first hand then we have created a friend of nature for life. I hope to have inspired them to make positive adjustments to help Mother Nature in any way they can".

Guna Segaran

Born on Maxwell Hill, the very amiable Guna comes with years of experience on the birds of the mountains and the foothills in and around the Bintang Range. He had started birding in1987 and he has guided many individuals and groups both local and foreign. He has even come face to face with a tiger up on Maxwell Hill! One of his favourite destinations is to visit Kuala Gula, were shorebirds and mangrove birds abound.

Selvam Rahman

Selvam grew up in the Cameron Highlands and as a young man became fascinated by the beauty and grace of our butterflies. Today he has made it his personal crusade to educate our society on the importance of these flying jewels. Along with the eminent Japanese entomologist Mr. Katsutoshi Kato, Selvam recently helped produce the book "Butterflies of Langkawi".

Hymeir Kamaruddin

Hymeir is a passionate conservationist who is particularly fond of crawling in tight spaces and watching his feathered friends. He has organized many caving-related expeditions for MNS and was actively involved in the running of the Selangor, Kedah and now the Penang Branches of this famous Society. As a WWF Malaysia staff member, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Perlis State Park and is now actively exploring and mapping caves there. He is currently running his own consultancy company focusing on ecotourism and natural-resource management; not surprisingly, caves and limestone constitute the bulk of his work.

More recently, Granada Media of the UK hired him for his vast experience as their 'Fixer' to help them film a joint WWF and Animal Planet documentary, Planet Action, which is currently being shown on Astro. Hymeir is interested in spreading the conservation massage by making special nature sites available to tourists. He is keen to see these special sites properly managed and feels ecotourism is the right way to do this without the impact mass tourism would bring.