Here, there and everywhere!

I hope the orangutans appreciate it! In the past two weeks, I have gone from Pangkalan Bun to Jakarta and back, Sukamara and back, and finally to Sebangau National Park and back; the last journey involving a cramped 10 hour overnight bus ride. In all that time, while I have seen their nests, I did not once lay eyes on a wild orangutan :-( This is an extraordinary amount of travelling, particularly so late in the year which is usually our quiet time. The meetings in Jakarta concerned the potential for protecting forests through the carbon markets, a process know as “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation” or REDD. REDD as a conservation tool is in its infancy though many groups are exploring how it could be applied in Indonesia.

Multi-stakeholder meeting with communities surrounding the Lamandau Reserve.

We went to Sukamara for a “Multi-stakeholders Meeting” when we bring together representatives from all the communities surrounding the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve as well as the local Government. The two-day meeting was a great success, helping us set our plans and targets for next year. Truly, we are receiving an incredible amount of support from the local Government.

The trip to Sebangau was arguably the most interesting, not least because I had never been there before. Sebangau was only designated a National Park in 2004 and yet is home to arguably the largest population of orangutans in any national park. Estimates consistently show a population of over 6,000 orangutans. Our reforestation team and I travelled there to see the land rehabilitation research being undertaken by the Centre for International Co-operation in Management of Tropical Peatlands (CIMTROP).

Research into peat swamp rehabilitation.

CIMTROP's is a pure research project, experimenting with different techniques, habitat types and tree-species to find what works best in degraded swamps. Our work is rather more applied – we want to cover a much larger area than the research project does but there is no sense in reinventing the wheel, or worse, repeating mistakes already made, so it was a valuable visit.

Interestingly, at the edge of the CIMTROP study area a team of Japanese scientists have erected an environmental monitoring tower which is some 40m high. I have always wanted to have an observation tower in Lamandau. Having climbed to the top you had to conclude the view was great.

The climb. Not one for the faint-hearted!

The view

Isam -Orangutan Foundation Land Manager at the top of the tower

Orangutan Foundation's Reforestation Team looking a little tense on top of the tower!

Sunset

Isam, our Land Manager who had never been anywhere near as high in his whole life, was finally persuaded to let go of the hand rail. Once on the ground though he did agree the climb was an adventure worth having.

Thank you Patrik W, Lucia C, Mia B and Wanda H for your recent donations. We really appreciate your support. We are now only $205 short from reaching our $5,000 target – please help us reach this by the end of November.

Thank you,

Stephen

Kampung Konservasi (November blog) - Sustainable Agriculture

An exciting development just happened at Kampung Konservasi this week that we would like to share. We finally published the first book on cabbage cultivation using the alternative agriculture method that we develop at Kampung Konservasi. Why is this exciting? The book is the result of long, hard work of our agriculture facilitator, Mr. Suwardi, who is now famous as “the cabbage man”.

Pak Suwardi - photo by Yayorin

I remember the first time Pak Suwardi joined the Kampung Konservasi team. He came all the way from Magelang, Central Java, where he was a successful farmer and an experienced community facilitator. He seemed to me as a “typical” Javanese farmer: calm, quiet, simple and hardworking. Kampung Konservasi was nothing like it is now. The area was practically empty, just high grass and a few young trees. The first thing Pak Suwardi noticed was, of course, the sandy soil. He told me that he had no idea what to do with it because he had never seen anything like it before. We then agreed that the only thing that he could do was to do as many trials as possible and learn from them.

Barren/sandy soil - photo by Yayorin

Cabbage Demonstration Plot - photo by Yayorin

Pak Suwardi has been working so hard since day one. He wakes us as early as five o’clock in the morning and works on the demonstration plots right away before the sun gets too hot. He has tried so many different things, planted so many seedlings, spoke with so many people and made many “mistakes”. The amount of physical work that this man can do is incredible! He has changed the face of Kampung Konservasi, almost all by himself. Before we knew it, we had wonderful harvests of tomatoes, chilies, string beans and cabbage! The cabbage was a major thing because nobody has ever grown cabbage in Borneo before. Just like most vegetables available in this area, cabbages come from Java, shipped across the sea.

The book to be distributed to local farmers.

Now, all of his experiences and findings, especially on cabbage cultivation, are written in a simple book that will be distributed to the local farmers. This book will be the first of many. Yayorin plans to publish a series of books on alternative agriculture, based on real experiences and field trials. These books are powerful tools that we can use to further our education efforts.

Terima kasih,

Sally (Yayorin)

Sustainable Agriculture Can Help Protect Orangutan Habitat.

Other than Kampung Konservasi's simple facilities such as the library, theatre, etc., we also use most of the area as sustainable agriculture demonstration plots. We grow and successfully harvest tomatoes, chilies, cabbages, string beans…all organic! We also keep fish and cows. We believe that if sustainable agriculture is done correctly, it can actually improve the degraded environment, protect native species, as well as eliminating current destructive agricultural practices, such as slash-and-burn.

Sustainable Agriculture Plots at Kampung Konservasi

Natural Fruit Fly Trap

Almost half of Kampung Konservasi’s ground used to be peat swamp; a few areas of this swamp were even as deep as grown man’s chest. Many local people believed that nothing can be done in peat swamp areas, and we already proved that we can farm fish very successfully there, using very simple materials to make the ponds such as bamboos and sand bags. We also bought a couple of cows because they are the best compost producers, and we can also sell them at the end when they grow bigger.

Below Organic Compost - the secret to our success!

Aquaponic Plots - Fish pond around the island where vegetables are growing.

Kampung Konservasi used to be a barren land it is now a thriving and lush place. We have encouraged the return of insect, bird, reptile and amphibian species. Through our agricultural practices soil and water quality has increased. In addition to growing vegetables we have also planted more than 100 tree species, ranging from fruit trees (mango, durian, rambutan, guava, papaya and pineapple) to Bornean endemic hardwood trees (ulin, gaharu, agates, and rattan, especially the local species). All plants have been labelled with signs showing the local, Indonesian, English and Latin names and information about the importance of the plant or its useful properties.

Nursery and seedlings

Kampung Konservasi Entrance Sign

Everything is to demonstrate to the local people and farmers that sustainable agriculture is a very promising income-generating activity for them to do. We are proud to report that individuals and groups have already adopted our agriculture methods in their own gardens and areas.

Terima Kasih,

Sally (Yayorin)

Kampung Konservasi - Every Place Is A School. Every Person Is A Teacher.

Stephen only got back last night from being in the field and today left for Singapore to renew his visa - sorry no posts from him. So for this week over to Sally, from Yayorin..... Kampung Konservasi (Indonesian for Conservation Village) is an integrated environmental learning facility ran by Yayorin (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesia) at the city of Pangkalan Bun in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. What started as a dream, now has become a dynamic place where people come to learn more about how to live “in harmony with nature”, a concept barely heard of in the area before.

The idea of Kampung Konservasi is quite simple really. Because Yayorin believes that there will be no real conservation without education, we felt (and still do) that people, especially those who live surrounding the orangutan habitats, must be introduced to the idea of “nature conservation” in more direct, simple, personal ways. We need an education center; a place where people can actually go to. We cannot just preach and say “Do not cut the trees!” or “Do not kill the orangutans!” because most of those who did illegal logging practices or illegal wildlife trade in this area only did that out of necessity. They needed the money to survive. If we really want conservation to happen, if we really want people to take conservation seriously, we need to work with these people and offer them alternative ways to make a living.

As I mentioned before, Yayorin believes that education empowers people. We believe that we must educate the young, and that is why in Kampung Konservasi we arguably have the biggest environmental library in the whole Kalimantan, regularly play environmental movies in our little theatre, offer small, informal “classes” for children to take part in and work together with local schools in many other environmentally-related activities. In addition to that, Kampung Konservasi receives visits from school teachers, student groups, youth groups, farmer groups, church groups, government groups and individuals almost every month.

Since its first opening for public in March 2006, Kampung Konservasi has grown so much. Through the Orangutan Foundation UK we have received operational funding from The Rufford Maurice Laing Foundation for three consecutive years; and some generous groups of people also donated funds for us to purchase more lands to enlarge our sustainable agriculture demonstration plots (more on this next time). There are still so many things to be done and so many people to be reached, but the future certainly looks promising for this exciting program. We hope that we can continue to bring you updates on Kampung Konservasi on a regular basis in this blog.

Visit us using this Virtual Tour

Terima kasih,

Sally (Yayorin)

Meet our partner, Yayorin (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesia)

We would like to introduce Yayorin (Yayasan Orangutan Indonesia) a grass roots conservation NGO. Stephen has mentioned their work in this blog because Yayorin are our partners on various programmes including the Belantikan Conservation Programme (see sidebar categories). Yayorin are an inspiring and committed organisation and we have learnt a great deal from their work. Because of this we want you to hear more about what they do. Once a month they will post an update here and hopefully, if time and resources enable them, they can increase the frequency.

We value our partnership with Yayorin, which stems from our shared vision that nature conservation benefits local communities and that the promotion of this idea is reliant on an educational infrastructure at a local level. We fully support Yayorin’s education and awareness programme REASON (Raise Education and Awareness to Save Orangutan and Nature).

Kampung Konservais is a major component of REASON. Indonesian for Conservation Village, Kampung Konservasi is an intergrated environmental learning arena. Its purpose is to encourage learning about environmental conservation issues and to demonstrate sustainable, alternative income-generating activities for people who live close to the forests.

I haven’t been to Kampung Konservasi but those who have visited are captivated by the place. Here is a sneak preview (link to virtual tour). Sally Tirtadihardja, from Yayorin will blog about the goings on at Kampung Konservasi and I hope you will enjoy reading them, as much I will.

Many thanks,

Cathy

Orangutan Foundation (UK)

Land rights and forest ownership

Sheryl raised two interesting points in her comment on the illegal farming: 1) “I’m sure the farmers knew they were on reserve land” We are pretty sure they did too as, in this part of the world, the Reserve is where the trees are! However, this is almost impossible to prove and, even knowing it is a conservation area, won’t necessarily stop the villagers from laying a claim to the land.

Slash and burn is commonly used to clear the forest.

Illegal settlement in cleared forest.

Secondly, Sheryl wrote “don’t people have to own the land or have permits from landowners to burn forest and start a farm? I mean, here I couldn’t just drive out to the country and start farming!” Bizarrely, Indonesian laws concerning community use of forest lands still end up promoting forest clearance. If you clear the land it is deemed an improvement. Anyone who improves the land has de-facto usage rights to it. And those rights are passed down from generation to generation. I have been in some very old secondary forest only to be told this is “Mr so and so’s land…”

In the case of the illegal farms, our only weapon is that the farm was clearly established after the Reserve was gazetted. It is illegal.

Kind regards,

Stephen

Illegal Farming Inside Protected Area

Following on from my last post “Busy, busy, busy”, here’s some more detail about the illegal farming. The farm was obviously productive and well-maintained. It had a fence around it to keep out wild pigs and deer. Inside, bananas, rice, cassava and a number of vegetables were all growing well. Indeed, if our agricultural demonstration plots looked that good we could be justifiably proud. Illegal farm inside Lamandau Wildlife Reserve

But there was one big problem with this farm – it is inside the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. It is obvious from the surrounding forest the farmers were not making use of fallow land, as we try to do with the demonstration farms. No, here, they had cleared the forest and then burnt it to boost soil fertility.

Note the surrounding tree-line.

This situation gives us a problem, as there is no real alternative to evicting them. We do not wish to have a confrontation with the surrounding villages; one of our aims is to establish harmonious relations between the neighbouring communities and conservation areas. However, if there is a flagrant violation of the law, as in this case, there is little that can be done. The farmers can not be allowed to continue. They are clearly damaging the forest, increasing the risk of forest fires and would almost certainly persecute any wildlife that took to crop raiding.

Once forest, now farm land.

Technically, the farmers could be arrested, but pragmatically this would only inflame local sensibilities and even the police would be reluctant to arrest someone for (as they will see it) “just growing food”. The balancing act facing us, therefore, is to get the people out of the Reserve without turning their whole village against us but, at the same time, creating a strong enough front to deter anyone else from attempting to farm there. The Forestry Department officials, under whose auspices we work, have suggested giving the farmers six months to complete the current harvest after which they must leave.

This seems reasonable. We can easily monitor them to make sure there is no further expansion or burning. We can also make use of this time to erect a signboard/ block on the river the farmers are using for access to prevent anyone else from saying “I did not know it was a Conservation Area”.

It is worrying that people still do not respect Lamandau’s borders but it is encouraging that our patrols clearly have good enough ground coverage that they were able to detect the farm and, secondly, that the Forestry Department has the resolve to deal with it. A strong display now will go along way to reducing such incidents in the future.

- P.S. Brigitta, thank you for the comment. It is a pity about the video question and answer session, but it will still be good to meet up. As I said, I will be at Pondok Ambung or Camp Leakey on the 10th, so we’ll meet up then. Safe travels!

Non-timber Forest Products

This morning we attended a meeting organised by the local forestry department. They are creating “An Inventory of the Potential for Non-timber Forest Products” in the local government district. Non-timber forest products, or NTFP, as they are referred to in conservation jargon, are an often used argument for the protection of forests. Local people for millennia have exploited NTFP and although their impact on the local environment and wildlife may be debated, in comparison to bulldozers their impact on the forests was negligible. Therefore, we consider NTFP a valuable tool in protecting the forests and we are pleased that the local government is taking this initiative (see the photos below showing various examples of NTFPs).

Fruit picking

Making rattan baskets

Rattan Baskets

Other craft products

This week I’ll have my own opportunity to assess the sustainability of NTFP. I’m off into the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve until Friday. A pleasant round of investigating reports of farming inside the reserve, plantation expansion on its border, and an assessment of activities on the western edge. Hopefully, I’ll see an orangutan or two.

I’ll write again when I get back on Friday or Saturday.

Sowing the seeds…

My every sense says the forests on the northern border of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve are in trouble. Already split into thin fingers of forest, separated by degraded areas, it seems these forests are retreating not expanding. However, with the support of local communities, we have chosen this area as a reforestation site. A few days ago I went there with Rene Dommain, the visiting German peat researcher, and we stayed at the very northern point of the Reserve, where we have a guard post, Post Prapat (see map).

Behind the post is one of the fingers of forest. Here there are tall trees, including those species found in deep forest, but they are only 20 metres away from sand. Clearly this is remnant primary forest and the thinner it gets, the more vulnerable it becomes.

Aerial view of Post Prapat with the remnant forest behind.

Rene helped to explain the process and no surprises here – the villain was fire. Whilst he described it as an “anthropogenic impact”, you and I can hear “man made”. The southern part of Borneo is a relatively “young” landscape. The base material is sand, deposited either from erosion of the high interior mountains or during the periods when the area was an ancestral seabed. Over thousands of years, grasses, shrubs, and then trees gradually covered the sand and forests grew.

Fires have had a major impact on this ecosystem. The first fires burning through the shallow humus layer, killing the trees’ roots. With the trees fallen the next fires to occur were even more destructive with subsequent fires encouraging scrub growth. Ultimately this left an exposed layer of sand with the original nutrient rich humus having been destroyed. Presently, these remaining forests are just waiting for the next dry year, the next fire.

The aim of the reforestation programme is not ambitious – even in our wildest dreams we cannot envisage the day when this will be thick forest. What we are trying to do is broaden the forested fingers, reduce the gaps and push the balance in favour of the trees not the scrub.

It is a tall order to regenerate this area, but you know us, we like a challenge!

We have established a tree nursery at Post Prapat. The people from the surrounding communities have been enthusiastic in finding wildings (seedlings harvested from wild seed-fall) to stock it. We will keep the trees in the nursery until their rooting systems are well established.

Nursery

The whole process is hugely resource-intensive and the return may be as little as 50ha (1/2 km2 or 123 acres). But that is hardly the point. The real points are:

• People learn about how fragile these ecosystems are.
• We are demonstrating that protecting the existing forest is much more effective than trying to re-grow it
• By protecting the fragile fringes, you prevent damage spreading to the core

In the case of Lamandau, the forest core is still rich in biodiversity. I led Rene on the 7 km walk southwards from Post Prapat to Camp Rasak. On the way, we saw a few birds and a snake. At Camp Rasak, I was hoping to catch of glimpse of Boni who we are told is seen most days and neither did we see Andi and Sawit, who seem to have gone off together (see post 'More orangutans back in the wild'). However we were fortunate to see Lady Di and her baby.

Lady Di was released into Lamandau in Febuary 2006 and this is her first baby.

It is hard to believe our reforestation programme site is only 7 km away, but without this added protection, this forest and these orangutans would seem a lot more vulnerable.

- PS, Sheryl, you’ll be pleased to know once the eagle, snake and monkeys were out of the traps, I also set the fish free :-)

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Palm oil, People, Bears and Banteng!

Dear All A few quick replies before the weekend to comments received during the week.

Firstly, the thorny issue of “sustainable palm oil”. Cathy, at the Foundation office in London writes:

“So far there is no sustainable palm oil from Indonesia or Malaysia. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) has said they hope to have some sustainable palm oil on the market at the end of this year. As far as we are aware most products that are "palm oil safe" or "Orangutan Friendly" are products that actively avoid palm oil. For example, the companies Paterson Arran and Little Satsuma, both supporters of the Foundation, avoid or have stopped using palm oil because of its associated problems. They are not products that “contain sustainable palm oil’, rather they are palm-oil free. However, there is palm oil that has been certified organic and is apparently grown in a sustainable way from Columbia.

It is probably worth asking companies, that declare their palm oil is sustainable or "Orangutan Safe", where it is sourced.”

Chris asked about the attitudes of local people. It is a huge question that most conservation organisations must deal with. What is clear, in order to be successful, you have to have the local people on your side. The reality is people will generally be motivated by self-interest. Employment is one way of marrying our and local people’s interests and has the added benefit of, over time, generating a heartfelt commitment to conservation. Many, if not all, of our staff have internalised respect for the forest and being “Orangutan Foundation” is part of their identity.

Mutual attachment!

It also has a trickle-down effect that spreads to their families and outwards to the communities in which they live. It is much harder for someone to take up illegal logging when they know their next-door neighbour will be out patrolling against them. In my blog I have also mentioned our programmes in Lamandau and Belantikan. Here we are actively working alongside local village communities to create and generate alternative and sustainable ways of earning an income from the forests.

You were all way too kind about my sun bear photos. Have you seen on Wildlife Direct there is actually a new blog about sun bears http://sunbears.wildlifedirect.org/ This group is based in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

Also in the week there were a few comments about Banteng. One of the little known facts about Banteng is that the largest population anywhere in the world is in Northern Australia, where they were introduced over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Lastly, thank you very much to the person who made an anonymous donation last week – your support of our work is much appreciated.

Have a good weekend.