The park covers a low-lying area of periodically flooded forests, swamps and grasslands.

Several hundred elephants from surrounding areas that were being deforested or converted for agriculture were driven into the Padang-Sugihan.

Other animals recorded in the park include leopard cat, fishing cat, Malayan sun bear, hairy-nosed otter, small-clawed otter, masked palm civet, otter civet, agile gibbon, southern pig-tailed macaque, crab-eating macaque, silvered leaf monkey, greater mouse deer, lesser mouse deer, wild boar, Bornean bearded pig, sambar deer, and previously the critically endangered Sumatran tiger.

The reserve is also an important wetland for a number of bird species, including Storm's stork, white-winged duck and the great hornbill.

The draining of the reserve and the illegal logging made the remaining forest more prone to fire, and much of the forest that remained was destroyed by large fires during drought and El Niño years through the rest of the 1990s.